


Here and Now: 1989

by emungere



Series: Here and Now [2]
Category: Weiß Kreuz
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-01 07:37:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 16
Words: 22,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2765045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emungere/pseuds/emungere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brad has finished his training at Rosenkreuz and now must choose his team for the final exam - just as his mentor brings in the most powerful and unstable telepath anyone has seen in years.</p><p>The underage warning is for thoughts and threats only.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ham and swiss, without a weapon, white room

_God, I'm an asshole,_ Dean Walker thinks. He blinks, because most of the time he considers himself to be a pretty decent guy. _Look,_ his thoughts continue, _that kid over there is starving, and you're eating a sandwich right in front of him like the dickweed you are._

Dean looks around and, sure enough, spots the kid in question. He's got greenish hair and gangly limbs, wrists sticking too far out of worn shirt sleeves. He's thin, and Dean really does feel like an asshole for not noticing. 

It doesn't seem right to hand over the remains of his own sandwich, and besides, he's already eaten almost half of it. He goes inside and gets another, hoping ham and swiss is okay. Doesn't everyone like ham and swiss? 

When he gets out again, he sees the kid disappearing into an alley. Dean jogs after him. 

"Hey! Hey, wait just a second..." He rounds the corner and peers into the darkness. Buildings tower seven stories up on either side, seeming to lean together in an effort to block all the available light. 

There's the kid, walking back towards him. He's holding something behind his back. 

_Hold still,_ Deans thinks to himself. He tries to hold out the bag with the sandwich in it, but he can't move. 

_This will hurt you more than it hurts me._

It's more surprise than pain that makes Dean flinch when the knife slides into his stomach. 

The kid kicks Dean Walker in the chest to get his knife out. It's stuck on something, and it takes a pretty hard kick. He steps neatly to the side to avoid the spurt of blood when it comes out. He takes the bag with the sandwich and sets it aside.

Dean has a nice watch and a lot of cash. Lots of credit cards, too, but he leaves those alone. The best stores have cameras now, and he can't fool cameras. The last time he tried, he ended up in front of a judge--again. 

He takes his sandwich and walks to the park. The smile on his face from having lunch for today and money in his pocket again wanes as he passes a woman crying on a bench. It waxes again when he passes the playground, and his head is filled with the joy of swings and merry-go-rounds. He passes a whistler and finds himself taking up the tune until the man is out of sight. Then he remembers that he doesn't know the song. 

Sitting with his back to a rock, he unwraps the sandwich. He concentrates on the feel of the wax paper, the way it wrinkles like old skin, the slick texture of it. The sandwich is ham and swiss on rye, specks of seeds running through it like rat droppings. He picks the seeds out and eats the sandwich in a few quick bites. 

Almost full now, he half-dozes in the sun. The minds in the park, perhaps fifty, one hundred, become his mind, all sunshine and blue sky and no, sweetheart, don't stand on the swing, is it going to rain later, why did she leave me...

_There he is. I told you._

_Shouldn't at least try to talk to him?_

_You saw what he did to that guy. Just do it. Plenty of time for talking later._

These voices come through in actual words, rocks in the sea of noise around him. He searches for their source without opening his eyes. Two men, hiding nearby. It's easier to see them through the eyes of a child searching for a ball in the bushes. 

He's ready when they come. A knife in throat does for one of them, and when the other man grabs him, he shoves a knee into his groin, not bothering to stay and watch him crumple. He's running blindly through a blur of alien panic as mothers pull their children away, as someone screams for the police. 

_A little up...how is he moving so fast...there. Aimdeepbreathfire._

He claps a hand to his neck a second after he feels the sting. The dart comes out easily, but it's too late. The sun is going dark. It's going to rain. 

***

He wakes briefly on the plane. The ground far below is blurred, and so are the men watching him with wary eyes. 

_Like an animal...so strong...what will we...how will we...what if..._

They're thinking so _hard_ at him. It hurts, spikes of heat in his brain, sharp metal in his stomach, the taste of blood, and he just wants them _out_. He pushes at their minds, pushes them away, and they stagger back physically. He smiles. 

One of them steps forward again. "It'll go easier for you if you cooperate."

The sudden stream of images is aimed at him, like a weapon; needles, restraints, electric shocks. He pushes against it violently, doesn't want to know, see, hear, just wants it to _stop_ \--

And then it does. He opens his eyes and doesn't remember closing them. The man is lying on the floor, face twisted, staring at nothing. 

For a moment, no one moves.

One of the others kneels down and touches his neck. "No pulse. He's gone."

Their captive smiles still wider. He can kill without a weapon. 

It's even easier the second time. 

***

When he wakes again, he is alone. 

No people. No voices. No thoughts. 

The room is white, floor, walls, ceiling. The chair to which he is strapped is painted white, marred with chips and stains and gouges. The straps at his wrists and ankles are white. 

_Hello?_ he thinks. Like a whisper in a dark room. He gets no answer. 

Experimentally, he thinks about his mother's soup. It had chunks of beef and carrots boiled soft and potatoes. Maybe celery. The memory is dim. She made it when they had money, which wasn't often. The soup sits in his mind, all his own. Nothing comes from the outside to push it away. 

He's thirsty, he realizes. There's a pitcher of water and a glass sitting out of reach on a white table. 

_He's_ thirsty. _He's_ hungry. He has to pee. It's all just him. Not the thirsty jogger, the starving alley cat, the toddler pulled along by an impatient parent. 

He's alone. He's never been alone before. 

He starts to laugh, and he can't stop.

He's starting to gasp for air and feel lightheaded when a tall man walks into the room and smacks him across the face. With the contact comes a brief slew of impressions and emotion, but it's quickly gone. 

"I'm Ketterson," the man says. 

"Fuck you," is his automatic response. 

Ketterson frowns. "You are currently enjoying the effects of our telepathic dampers. I could turn them off."

"No."

"Then give me your name, please. We can start there."

"No." He shifts. "Take the straps off first."

"You killed three of our agents. I don't think so."

He shakes his head and seals his lips together. 

"We can help you," Ketterson says. "We can teach you how to control your talent. You can feel like this all the time, without the aid of the dampers. Would you like that?"

He nods, hesitantly. To be able to think his own thoughts...all the time...

"I know what it's like," Ketterson says. "I am the same as you. There was so much noise before I learned to control it that I could barely think. Other people's thoughts and needs and wants--all the time. No room for mine. I'd like to help you."

There's no reading him, no knowing if he means it. But if he does...

"Your name," Ketterson says. 

He must have had a name, once upon a time. If he still had one, he wouldn't give it away so easily. 

"Dean Walker," he says.

Ketterson's smile is triumphant, but he makes the mistake of brushing bare skin when he unbuckles the first strap. 

The brief contact brings smug self-satisfaction, a sense of victory, and the knowledge that Ketterson plans to use him. _A good tool until he breaks. A few years. He's too high-level to last._

He grabs for Ketterson's throat. The skin there is soft and warm, and his fingers dig in easily. He feels Ketterson's pain as he felt Dean Walker's, as he felt a dozen other deaths. Everything hurts. He's used to it.

Ketterson gives a choked cry, and more people rush in. Images of red-tinted violence as they pry his hand away and strap him back into the chair. 

Ketterson stands, swaying, and takes a step closer to him. Hand on his cheek. 

_You want to be alone? Maybe after a few days like this, you'll change your mind._

They leave, all of them. Ketterson looks back once, and he's smiling.

Time passes, unreckoned. 

He manages to scoot his heavy chair closer to the water. He bends down to drink from the straw. No, not quite close enough. He twists and rocks and inches the chair forward another inch. 

The chair leg catches against the light table and jiggles it just enough. The glass tips over, spilling water and straw onto the white floor. 

He wonders if he will be left to die like this. He wonders if he cares. 


	2. bruises, too many files, recognition

The ring of bruises around Ketterson's neck is turning green today, Brad notices. He doesn't know how it happened, but that doesn't stop it from improving his day just a little every time he sees it. 

He hides his smile and instead frowns at the stack of folders on Ketterson's desk. "I get first choice?" His mind is automatically looking for the catch, although he suspects the catch is merely that he has sort through all of these. 

Ketterson nods. "First in your class, first pick of your team for finals."

Brad refuses to show his surprise. First in his class. How typical for Ketterson to tell him as if he should already know. 

Ketterson chuckles. "Well, you are a precog. I thought you'd check."

He doesn't say that he tries not to use his talent for trivialities, but of course Ketterson hears it anyway. He keeps such a constant watch on Brad's mind these days that it must be tiring for him. And eminently frustrating, since Brad is careful to make sure there's never anything but the most commonplace thoughts to read. 

"You're a telepath. I thought you'd know I hadn't." He's been so good for so long that he can get away with this now. 

Ketterson is almost sure of him. Brad's worked hard the last eight years to make sure he stays sure. There are others who are less sure. Hope, who taught him to manage his talent and who still writes him letters now and then, worries about him. It's clear in her arid prose and the way she never asks him about his plans for the future. He wouldn't tell her anyway, but she doesn't know that. Blackie almost certainly worries, as well, though he has grown more enigmatic with every year that passes. 

Ketterson merely rolls his eyes and pushes another stack of folders towards him. "You remember the rules?" 

As if there's been a time in eight years when Brad has forgotten the rules of this place. 

"Three team members, none of them in my year," he says. "When do I get my mission?"

"As soon as you've picked your team. I'll leave you to it."

Ketterson closes the door behind him, and Brad is alone.

He sighs. This would be so much easier if it were all computerized, but Eszett is decidedly slow on the technology front. Ketterson's justification is that paper files can't be hacked, but it seems a flimsy one to Brad. 

Half the people in Eszett can hack minds. They wouldn't have to bother with computers. And, as far as he knows, Eszett has no enemies that pose a major threat. Excepting himself, of course. 

He sorts through files, glancing at the cover sheet which gives age, talent, and grade point average. The weather workers he discards immediately. Charles was held back a year, which puts him in the class after Brad's, and his talent and control have developed astonishingly just in the past six months. Besides, Charles needs the experience if he wants to have a hope of leading his own team and graduating next year. 

That leaves him two positions to fill. He'd like a telepath, but only if he can find one rated as high Ketterson. 

He sorts the stacks by year and GPA, tossing out those lower than 3.0, the weaker telepaths, and the pyrokinetics. 

When he gets to Dieter's little brother, he pauses. Mark Jasovik, 4.0, 16 years old, passive and projective empathy. Having roomed with him for three years, Brad knows that the boy is good. And they didn't kill each other, though Brad's eleventh year was a haze of artificial depression which nearly led him to slit his wrists before he realized what was going on. Mark was much subtler than his brother had been, and much more professional. 

A possibility. He sets the folder aside. 

Two hours later, he has a stack of ten folders to fill two positions. Mark Jasovik's is in it, though he's almost taken it out twice. He stands and stretches, pacing the room. 

Ten paces to the wall and ten paces back again. He leans against the windowsill, and his eyes fall on the small table beside it. Another small stack of folders looks up at him, and he groans out loud. Wonderful, more choices. Just what he needs. 

He sits on the floor with his back against the wall and starts going through them. These students are younger, much younger in some cases. Mari Jacobs, 6 years old, telekinetic. No GPA. Javier Luz Garcia, 7 years old, telepath, level untested, also no GPA. New students, he realizes. They're not out of bounds to him, but he'd be crazy to pick someone untrained for his team. 

He keeps flipping through folders anyway. He feels like he's looking for something, though he has no idea what--until he finds it. 

No name, no GPA, no precise age. Early teens, it says, and under talent--telepath. There is a hand-written note at the bottom of the cover sheet. _Very high level, but major disciplinary problems. Recommend initial isolation._

Isolation means the White Room; it's the only room in the castle fitted with telepathic dampers. Brad wonders what exactly "major disciplinary problems" means. He's seen his own file, and he didn't warrant even a "minor disciplinary problems" note, and he tried to shoot his recruiter. 

He turns the page and stops. Sky-blue eyes, dyed green hair, dirty and matted, and a feral snarl. Brad feels the muscle of his heart contract, holding onto his blood supply a second too long until his vision starts to blur. That's _him_. 

His heart releases, and he can see again, breathe again. He stares at the picture, expecting the moment of recognition to fade as it has every other time he's thought he found the owner of the eyes from his childhood visions. It doesn't. That's him. And he's here, now, in this building. 

He flips to the last page and sees another brief hand-written note. _Subject untrainable. Termination recommended._ And, at the bottom of the paper, a red stamp: APPROVED.

He lets the folder drop to the floor, scrambles to his feet, and _runs._


	3. termination, please sir, chocolate

Brad stops around the corner from the White Room to recover himself and to stop panting quite so hard. He smoothes his hair back into place and straightens his clothes, wishing he'd had time to change. A suit would make more of an impression on the guards. Still, they know who he is. 

He walks around the corner, briskly but not too briskly. It won't do to seem in a rush. 

The guards are standing on either side of the door. 

"This is where the telepath is being held?"

One of them nods curtly. "Scheduled for termination. No visitors allowed."

"I'm not a visitor. I'm taking him for my final exam team. I have Ketterson's approval."

The guards exchange glances. Everyone knows Ketterson's protegee. That will work for him, but he doesn't know if it will be enough. 

"Ketterson signed the termination order himself," one of them says. But there is doubt in his voice.

"Well, obviously he didn't expect me to want a problem case on my team. He was wrong. I'd like to see the boy now."

"You know he killed three agents, right?"

Well, that explains the note on the file. Brad's expression does not so much as flicker. "All the better. Most students need to be taught how to kill."

Another glance is exchanged, and the guard who hasn't spoken yet turns to unlock the door. The other one says, "I guess it's not going to hurt to just let you talk to him. We'll have to call Ketterson to confirm this, of course."

"Of course," Brad says blandly.

"I wouldn't touch him. He can read you with skin contact even through the dampers, and he killed one of the agents just with his talent."

Brad nods impatiently, as if he already knew this, though the news is almost as stunning as the sight of the photo was. Ketterson can't kill with his mind, and he's the most powerful telepath Brad has ever met. 

The door swings open, and Brad steps through. 

He has to stare for a second, just stop and stare, mouth open and mind blank. It's really him. The recognition is strong he feels there should be some sort of visual fireworks to go with it, but there's only the white walls and the boy's glare. 

Brad walks forward, and the door closes behind him. 

***

"What's your name?" the new guy asks. 

He would tell him to fuck off, but he can't remember the last time someone gave him water, and his throat isn't working right. He keeps himself from looking at the water pitcher. That's begging. He doesn't beg. 

But he doesn't have to beg. The new guy brings over a glass and lets him drink from the straw. Doesn't even pull it away after a sip like others have. Doesn't laugh at all. 

He does pull it away after half the glass is gone, saying, "Not too much at once. You'll be sick."

The last swallow went down the wrong way, and the boy starts coughing, body bent forward over his knees. If he's going to puke, he'll make sure he does it on the new guy's shoes. 

"Your name," the man says again, when the coughing fit has passed.

"Why do you people care so much about my name?" he gets out. 

The words are harsh and somehow not what he was expecting his voice to sound like. But then, he barely recognizes the sound of his own thoughts, even after days of having only them for company. 

The man shrugs. "I don't. I want something to call you, that's all. I'm Brad," he adds. 

And out of his pocket he's taking...what? Not a gun or a knife. A chocolate bar. He unwraps it and holds a piece out, snatching his fingers away just before the boy's teeth would have closed on them. 

"Call me schuldig," the boy mumbles around a mouthful of chocolate. "That's what the judges always call me. Until I change their minds." He swallows, feeling a surge of chemical sweetness that translates almost directly into blood sugar, something he's been sorely lacking for--however long he's been here. "I can change your mind, too."

"Perhaps. Perhaps I can change yours."

"Yeah, right."

***

Brad wants so badly to untie the boy and get him out of this damn room, get him some place safe. He shoves the urge into the back of his mind, but it keeps nagging at him. The need to protect him is nearly as strong as the need to protect himself. 

He schools himself to patience. Ketterson will be here soon, and he has things to say first. 

"They want to kill you," he says. "As much as they want your talent, you're too much for them."

The boy--Schuldig would do as a name for now--nods. "I know," he says. "He said I was too high level to last."

"Ketterson? Yes, that sounds like him." 

Brad thinks for a moment, studying the boy, too aware of the way his hands twitch and of how thin his wrists are, tacked down by the restraints. They must be chafing. 

"Do you want to live?" he asks, finally. A yes answer to this question is something he's learned not to assume from the people Eszett captures. 

Schuldig grinds his jaw, and Brad holds out another piece of chocolate for him. Again, he yanks his hand back in time to avoid getting bitten. 

"You're fast," Schuldig says.

"I can see the future," Brad replies. "I don't have to be fast. Just prepared."

"Yes," Schuldig says. His tongue flicks out to lick chocolate from the corners of his mouth. "I want to live. You can really see the future?"

"Yes." And his talent is telling him he's running out of time. Ketterson is coming. "Listen to me," he says. "I'm going to help you if I can. Keep quiet when Ketterson gets here. Let me do the talking. Your termination order's been signed, and the best I can get you right now is a reprieve. I suggest you take it without complaint."

"Why the hell should I trust you?"

He has no answer for that, but it doesn't matter. Ketterson is here. 

The door swings open and bangs against the wall. Ketterson's eyes are narrowed. 

"What the hell are you doing here, Bradley?" 

"I want this one for my team," Brad says, as calmly as he can manage. "I saw his file. He'll test off the charts."

"Maybe. If you could get him to test without ripping his examiner's throat out." He gestures to his own neck. "Who do you think did this?"

Brad's regard for Schuldig rises still higher, and he's hard put to it not to smile. 

"I didn't know," he says. "But my point stands. He could be very useful."

Schuldig's shoulders tighten at that, but Brad can't afford to think of his feelings right now.

***

 _Useful_. All these people want him to be useful. They want to use him, and this one is like all the rest. He wants to tell them both to fuck off, but he stays quiet. It's like that movie, he thinks. _Come with me if you want to live._ Besides, if this guy gets him out of here, he can always kill him later. 

Maybe.

Unless he really can see the future. 

He shifts in his chair, not really listening to the argument going on over his head. New guy has moved to stand beside him, hand on his shoulder, but he's not getting much through the cloth. Just a vague sense of concern. That could mean anything. 

He leans toward him, just a little, and the guy's thumb slides across the bare skin on the back of his neck. 

The concern is suddenly much stronger, and it's for him. All for him. Not because this guy--Brad--not because he wants to use him or break him or--or anything. Nothing like that. Because Brad wants to keep him safe. Is almost desperate to keep him safe. 

The hand tightens on his shoulder, and he looks up. Nothing of that concern shows on Brad's face.

"Please, sir," he says to the other man. _Please, sir_ meaning _I'd like to kill you will kill you see you dead your body burned_. "I don't think he's untrainable. I'd like to take the risk."

The other man sighs and touches the bruises around his neck. "Fine. But if you fail because of him, don't think you won't bear the consequences."

He can't tell if the wash of relief is his own or Brad's, if the pleasure he feels knowing where those bruises come from is his own or Brad's, and for a moment, he is unsure who is sitting in the chair and who is standing beside it. It's not so bad, this confusion. It's not as frightening as it has been in the past. It will stop when Brad moves his hand, and he almost doesn't want that to happen. 

It does happen, though. Brad steps away and walks to the door with the other man. They talk together in low voices, and he catches only a few words. _Dangerous, with his mind, unstable, care, sedation,_ and, oddly, _bath_. The last comes from Brad as he looks over at him with mild distaste. 

Then the other man is gone, and Brad is undoing the straps at his wrists and ankles and helping him stand. His legs feel shaky, and his vision blanks for a moment in a fuzz of black and red. 

An arm slips around his waist and steadies him. 

"All right?" Brad asks.

He nods and stands up straighter. He reaches for the rest of the chocolate bar in Brad's pocket, but Brad catches his wrist and pushes his hand away. 

"Just ask," Brad says. "It's not as if I won't give it to you. But it's not yours."

If he kills Brad, it would be his. He hesitates, feeling that pressure build up in his mind, seeing Brad lying on the floor, eyes open and empty like the man on the plane. 

Brad is looking at him calmly. He has let go of his wrist and now holds the chocolate bar.

He makes a grab for it, but Brad pulls it out of his reach. 

He frowns. His hands work at his sides--fist, open, fist, open. Smoothing down his thighs. He wants it. He doesn't want to kill Brad.

"Give it to me," he says, at last. 

Brad hands it over with a slight smile. "We'll work on please and thank you later. After you get cleaned up."

The word _bath_ looms in his mind again. He doesn't like being wet and he doesn't like being naked, and he could _drown_ in that much water. 

But for now, he has chocolate. If Brad insists on the bath, he can always kill him later. 


	4. bath, education, denial

Brad sits down, takes off his glasses, tucks them in his pocket and rests his face in his hands. There is water soaking into his pants. He is not at all surprised. He would've thought the boy would _welcome_ a bath, smelling like that. 

He would've thought someone at least in his early teens could be trusted to bathe himself, for that matter. But no, Brad thinks he may well need armed assistance if he wants to press this issue. 

Now there is water all over the bathroom (and his shirt and now the seat of his pants), and Schuldig is gone. Back in the White Room, his talent tells him. 

It's not surprising, when he thinks about it. The telepathic dampers must have been a huge relief. In retrospect, pulling Schuldig away from them so quickly and without any training was probably a mistake. Still, he does wish the boy had been a little less...violent...in his rejection of the bath. 

Brad goes back to his room to change and then to the White Room. Schuldig is sitting in a corner, knees drawn up to his chest. 

_Should've gotten a trainer first_ , Brad thinks. He should go and get Baine right now. She could teach him the basics at least. But Schuldig is looking up at him now, expression flickering between anger, resentment, and fear. He finds he can't just walk away from that, no matter how practical he wants to be. 

He walks over and sits on his heels beside the boy. "Maybe the bath could wait."

"S'a lot of water," Schuldig mumbles.

"I'm pretty sure you have fleas."

The boy scratches his head and glares. 

Brad sighs. "Look, if I get someone in here to help you deal with your talent, do you promise not to kill her?"

Sullen silence is his only response. 

"I have things to do, you know. I don't have time to babysit you. You need to learn to control your abilities."

More silence. 

"Schuldig! Are you even listening to me?"

Schuldig's hand catches his wrist, and he feels it as a flash of heat, a surge of pressure from inside his skull that registers as pain only for a second before it is gone. He feels something warm and wet running down his face. A few drops of blood fall to the floor. 

He catches the rest with a handkerchief and catches Schuldig's jaw in his hand. "Stop that," he snaps. 

Schuldig kicks him in the chest so he falls backward, landing on his ass.

"I don't like this!" Schuldig yells. 

"Too bad for you." He doesn't have time for this. He has a final decision to make on his team before the end of the day. He'll get his mission tomorrow morning, and after that he'll have exactly three days before they have to leave. Three days to get this child into shape for the field. 

He grabs Schuldig's wrist and hauls him close, gets an arm around his waist and throws him over his shoulder. He gets kicked sharply in the ribs for his trouble, but stands anyway. Schuldig is light, thin, barely there at all. His heels, however, are definitely there. Once or twice, they are nearly in Brad's face. He clamps an arm over Schuldig's thighs, limiting his motion, and walks grimly out of the room. 

Baine has class right now, but that's not his problem. The kids she's teaching have years to learn what Schuldig needs to learn in the next three days. 

Halfway there, Schuldig stops trying to kick him in the face. 

"This isn't the way to the bath."

"We're not going to the bath," Brad says. "You're going to learn how to put up a decent mental shield. Then maybe you can deal with the concept of personal hygiene without throwing a fit like a four year old."

"I could kill you right now," Schuldig says. He sounds more sulky than threatening. 

"I'd wait until I put you down if I were you."

"I _hate_ you."

"I don't care." Even as he says it, he's slightly horrified to discover that it's not true. 

This is the man he's been seeing his whole life? This is who he's been waiting to meet? This brat of a child, already a killer, barely even human? 

No. He doesn't want this, doesn't need this. Except he _does_. The feeling is illogical and inescapable. 

He wrenches open the door to Baine's classroom, stalks in, and dumps Schuldig on her desk. 

"Teach him," he says. And to Schuldig, "Don't kill her. Or anyone else."

They're both fucking telepaths. They can sort the rest out on their own. 

He leaves, ignoring Baine's protests, Schuldig's curses, and the voice in his head telling him that the boy needs clean clothes, a decent meal, and very possibly a course of antibiotics. God knows what he's picked up along with the fleas and the smell.

He walks quickly back to Ketterson's office and locks the door. The files are far easier to deal with. And now he has one less position to fill. 


	5. oracle, mission, run

In the end, Brad chooses Mark Jasovik for his fourth. The boy is skilled, professional, and solidly committed to rising through the ranks of Eszett. Hopefully more committed than he is to revenge at this point. 

A telekinetic would be nice, but there is no one interesting in the files. Ketterson could be withholding someone, but if he is, he is. Brad has pushed his luck as far as it will go today. 

He sets the folders aside and logs on to the old computer in the corner. He would rather use pen and paper, for security reasons, but e-mail is faster. 

He types in his old teacher's e-mail address and stares at the screen for a moment, trying to think how to phrase this. 

`To: oracle@doubles.com  
From: brad_c@doubles.com  
Subject: Time critical question`

`Hope,`

`Have you ever had a recurring vision of the far future, and if so, when it was finally fulfilled, was it immediately apparent why you were given that vision?`

`Bradley`

He stares at the words on the screen, sure that they don't come close to conveying the level of confusion he feels. That's good. Hope has never threatened him, but weakness is still weakness. But she is the best precognitive he knows, and the only one he comes close to trusting. He sends the message and logs out. 

He leaves the room with his three team members' files in hand and walks up the stairs to Ketterson's room. He knocks. 

Ketterson opens the door and snatches the files from him, flipping through them. 

"Mark Jasovik? Seriously? I'd think you'd want at least one person you could depend on. That boy is a menace, and the weather worker, good God. He's not as hopeless as he used to, but still. If you even pass with this team, I'll be damned impressed."

Brad shrugs. Ketterson could be trying to shake his faith in his choices, or he could genuinely be trying to help. It's impossible to tell which, but in either case, his decision is made. 

"Are you sure about this?" Ketterson asks. 

"I'm sure."

"Here's your mission then." Ketterson picks up a folder and tosses it to him so that Brad has to clutch it to his chest to keep the papers from scattering everywhere. "I look forward to your reaction."

Which means that he won't be allowed to read it for the first time in private. Brad stifles a sigh and opens the folder, strengthening his mental shields. He has no intention of giving Ketterson the reaction he wants. 

The first page has a numeric code, denoting the type of mission--assassination, as it almost always is for student finals. He glances down the page to see what proof of kill will be required. He was expecting it to be the heart. It would be just like Ketterson to choose this time to remind him of Fritter, but no, it's only a hand. That is a relief. The heart would've been much messier. 

He flips to the next page, which contains the target's name and location. Daisy Miasnikov, and there is a town in Siberia listed, though no street address. Brad frowns at the page for a moment. Something is not right. He tightens his mental shields still more and turns the page. 

When he sees her photo, everything comes back to him at once. Her broad, smiling face, the warm vinyl smell of the cab of her truck, her mother feeding him cookies. His own desperate hope that he wouldn't get her killed. 

He keeps his face blank as he flips through the rest of the papers, taking in only surface information. He feels Ketterson probing at his thoughts and casts his mind forward automatically. Only a few seconds from now, the future splits into a hundred possible actions. It is enough to make Brad dizzy, let alone Ketterson. 

He closes the file. "Thank you, sir. I'd like to return to my room and look this over in more detail if that's all right."

Ketterson looks disappointed, which is good. It means he believes that Brad hasn't even recognized his target. He nods in dismissal. 

"Go on, then. Make sure you keep an eye on that boy. If he kills any more of our people, it's on your head."

Brad exits as quickly as he can, carefully not thinking. He walks on automatic pilot, feet steering him towards his own room. Not until he has his door closed behind him does he dare to relax his shields a little. 

If Ketterson even suspects that Brad knows who she is, it will limit his options severely.

He listens to his own thoughts for a moment and curls his hands into fists. Options? He has no options. If he wants to get out from under Ketterson's eye, if he wants the faintest measure of trust from Eszett, he has to do this. Without that trust, he will have no chance to destroy them. 

He lays the pages out on his bed, sorted into piles. He wonders if Ketterson spared her then specifically for this purpose. He shakes his head. It doesn't matter what Ketterson's purpose is. It matters only what his own response is. 

Half an hour later, with every sheet carefully read, he crosses his legs and starts making mental to-do lists. It's a long way to Siberia, regardless of what he'll do when he gets there. 

He's just gotten as far as realizing that he'll have to get street clothes for everyone--not one of them has worn anything but a uniform for years--when he hears Baine's mental voice. It's controlled, but there is a note of panic to it. 

_Get down here now. He's going to kill her, and I can't stop him._

With it comes an image of Schuldig throttling one of Baine's students. For the second time in one day, Brad finds himself on his feet and running.


	6. run, threats, delegation

Brad gets to Baine's classroom in under a minute, possibly an even more record-setting time than his dash from Ketterson's office to the White Room. He doesn't bother to take the time to compose himself.

A hard push slams the door open hard enough to rattle the glass. Brad stands for a split second in the doorway, aware of the stares and pleased by them. He's still more pleased by the fear. Even Baine looks as if she expects violence from him, and perhaps worse. 

Schuldig, on the other hand, has his hands locked around a young girl's throat and doesn't so much as look round. 

Brad crosses the room quickly and pulls him off her bodily, hands clenched in the fabric of Schuldig's shirt, slamming him up against the wall. There is nothing in Schuldig's face but blind rage. 

"Didn't I tell you," Brad says quietly, "not to kill anyone?" 

He watches as reason--or the closest he's yet seen to it from him--comes back to Schuldig's eyes. The boy's body loses most of its tension in a rush, and Schuldig hangs in his hands like a doll. 

"She was thinking too loud," Schuldig mutters. "They were all thinking too loud."

Possibly, Brad thinks, it was not the best idea to send him from the mental isolation of the White Room into a classroom full of uncontrolled telepaths. But he can't teach Schuldig himself, and there's no _time_. The boy will have to cope. 

"I don't care," Brad tells him. "If you do this again, I will kill you."

"No, you won't," Schuldig says calmly. 

Brad can't refute it, and that makes him want to hit something. Someone. Instead, he takes a deep breath, lets it out, and tells the truth. 

"Fine. But I do not have time for this. Do it again, and I'll leave you to them. To Ketterson. Do you understand?" 

Schuldig watches his face for a moment and then nods slowly. 

"Good."

Brad sets him down and takes his arm, pulling him over to Baine's desk. 

"I apologize for the interruption. It won't happen again."

He walks out, Schuldig in tow, without waiting for a reply. Once the dramatic exit is complete, he has to stop in the middle of the hallway, because he has no idea where he's going next. 

He sighs, pushes his glasses up, and pinches the bridge of his nose briefly. 

"Are you hungry?" he asks.

Schuldig's expression suggests that this is a monumentally stupid question. 

***

Brad sits back out of splatter range and watches Schuldig devour sausage and cabbage and something mysterious that's been boiled for too long. The plate was loaded when it came out of the kitchen. That was, at most, five minutes ago. It's half-empty now. Brad considers the possibility that Schuldig has some paranormal speed-eating talent in addition to the telepathy. 

_Haven't eaten for three days, asshole._

"Telepathy is not an excuse to talk with your mouth full."

Charles chooses that moment to slump into the seat beside Brad and looks at him over his glasses. 

Brad glares in response. "What?"

"Hey, I didn't say a word."

"Good. What are you doing here?"

"Ketterson told me I'm on your team. If you want to tell the other two before he gets to them, you'd better hurry."

Brad shakes his head. "Probably already too late. He might take it better from Ketterson anyway."

"He who?"

"Mark Jasovik."

Charles' expression speaks for him. 

"I know," Brad says. "I know. He was the best choice. Even...considering."

"What about number four?"

Brad tips his head towards Schuldig. 

One of the things Brad likes about Charles is his habit of not stating the obvious. Even so, his restraint now is admirable. 

"I see," Charles says. He taps a cigarette out of the pack in his coat pocket and lights it. "Well, this should be fun."

"As long as it's successful."

"And by fun, I mean of course that we're all going to die."

Brad sighs. Apparently some things are too much even for Charles' restraint. "Yes, all _right_. By which I mean _shut up_."

"Yes, I got that." 

Charles blows a smoke ring, and Brad snatches his cigarette away and stubs it out.

Delegate, Brad thinks. They're trying to teach him to be a leader. Leaders delegate. 

"I have to go over the file again. Take him to find some clothes. And make sure he has a--" Brad stops, on the verge of spelling out B-A-T-H so Schuldig won't suspect anything. "Just get him cleaned up."

Both of them turn to look at Schuldig.

The boy's plate is free of any speck of food, and Brad is forced to wonder if he licked it clean.

"He's sort of..." Charles starts, uncertainly.

"He's your teammate."

Charles hesitates for only a second before he stands. 

"Right," Charles says. "Come on, young man."

Brad takes Schuldig's jaw in his hand, forcing eye contact. 

_I know you don't know what teammate means, so I'll put it like this. If you hurt him, I will hurt you. Nod if you believe me._

Schuldig nods.

Brad fishes another piece of chocolate out of his coat pocket and hands it over. 

"Good boy."

He watches the two of them leave, Charles glancing behind him every few seconds. Brad can't blame him for being nervous. Any sensible person would be with Schuldig at his back.

Once they're out of the dining hall, Brad stands and heads in the other direction. It's time to talk to Mark. 


	7. smoke, so they say, tiger

"What's your name?" Charles asks. 

"Schuldig." 

He thinks of it as his name now, instead of just something to be called. Maybe because Brad thinks of it as his name, and that woman too, and all the kids in that classroom who wouldn't shut up. It feels odd to have a name, but not bad. 

"I'm Charles."

"No bath," Schuldig says.

He gets no answer for a few seconds. Charles lights another cigarette. Schuldig watches the smoke twist in the air, watches Charles' fingers and the shape of his mouth. He's seen people smoke before, but everything he sees here seems new. 

His head is clearer. That woman tried to show him how to keep other people's minds out of his, and he doesn't quite understand that yet, but he can feel now that most of the people here are trying to keep out of his head already. 

Charles has a barrier between himself and Schuldig, thin like smoke. It's not really keeping Schuldig from hearing his thoughts-- _Weird fucking kid, wonder why Brad wants him_ \--but they are muted, like hearing them underwater. 

"Do you know where the United States is, kid?"

Schuldig blinks at him. Strange as it is to have a name, to have his mind almost to himself, it is stranger still to have people talking to him. Talking to him like he's normal, like he's human, expecting an answer. 

He shakes his head once, jerkily. He doesn't even know what this United States is.

"It's across the ocean. It's where Brad's from. The midwest, I've gathered, though he doesn't talk about it much." _Or in fact, ever,_ say Charles' thoughts. "They have a saying there--well, I imagine they have it other places too, but I've been stranded in the wilds of Germany for approximately forever, so how would I know? Anyway, cleanliness is next to godliness. Which is the only explanation I can come up with for how often Brad changes his socks. I mean, every day! Sometimes twice. Doesn't that seem excessive to you?"

Schuldig frowns. He only has one pair of socks. 

"So my point--he's very keen on personal hygiene, is Brad. I suspect your choice is between bathing on your own and being drugged and having someone do it for you. Which would you prefer?"

Schuldig thinks about this. Charles believes it. And Brad did seem to feel strongly about the bath. Schuldig still doesn't like the idea of that much water, but he feels calmer now, more steady for having eaten. 

He's not supposed to hurt Charles. And when he hurt Brad, it didn't seem to make any difference. Brad wasn't scared of him. That's the strangest thing of all. 

"I bet he'd give you more chocolate," Charles says. 

Schuldig kicks the floor with his toe and sighs. "Okay," he says. "Bath." 

***

"If I'd refused," Mark says, smiling, "would I get bribed with chocolate, too?"

Brad wants to know who else saw that scene in the dining hall, but he's not going to ask. One of the telepaths, for it to have gotten to Mark before he did. He's glad he didn't pick any of them for his team. 

"You can't refuse. You know that." 

"Of course." Still smiling. "And at my age, it's an honor just to be chosen, especially by the great Brad Crawford." He drops his smile and arranges his face in Ketterson's customary grim expression. His imitation, from stance to voice, is eerily accurate. "We're expecting great things, Brad. Don't let me down. You'll be sorry if you do."

Brad says nothing. He learned long ago to wait Mark out.

"He never says that last part, of course, but we can all hear it. I wonder what he'd do if you failed the exam."

"I won't," Brad says.

"Gosh," Mark says brightly. "I wish I was so confident. Or is that overconfident? They're so hard to tell apart sometimes."

 _There's no use getting upset,_ Fritter would have said. _Lies can't hurt you, and the truth tastes the same from a friend or an enemy._ Mark is good at making sure the truth tastes as bitter as possible, but Brad doesn't mind that anymore. It's impossible not to see his own flaws with Mark around. He appreciates that. 

Again, Brad waits.

Mark sighs and gets up, straightening the tiny glass figurines he keeps on the shelf over his desk. They're all people--ballerinas, construction workers, schoolteachers--except one. Off on the right is a glass tiger. 

"You're no fun anymore, Brad."

The only possible reply to that is _Good_ , so he says nothing. 

Mark picks up the glass tiger, turning it so the light from the window glints off of it and right into Brad's eyes. 

"My brother got this for me. He said it was supposed to be him. You know, the tiger among all the tiny, breakable people. He got most of these for me, actually."

Brad thinks that Mark, if he lives that long, is going to be an evil mastermind some day. He'll be the kind who tries to talk their victims to death and ends up giving them the opportunity to saw through the ropes with a handy piece of broken glass. 

"He was wrong, though," Marks says. 

He tosses the tiger to Brad, who barely catches it in time. It's warm from Mark's hand. 

"He wasn't smart enough or fast enough to be the tiger. You've heard that saying, right?" 

Brad shakes his head. Listening to Mark talk is strangely hypnotizing, even when he's not consciously using his gift. 

"If you've got the tiger by the tail, you'd better not let go? Something like that, anyway. Neither of us can afford to let go right now, can we?"

"We'll never be able to let go," Brad says.

Mark smiles. "Not until the tiger is dead."

Brad is talking about Eszett, but he has the unsettling feeling that Mark is talking about him. He knows Mark hates him. He hopes that he hasn't misjudged the intensity of that hatred. 

If he has, it's too late now. 

"We'll meet at dinner to discuss mission details."

Marks nods, and Brad offers him the figurine back. 

"Keep it," Mark says. "I think you need the reminder more than I do."

Brad tucks it in his pocket. "Perhaps you're right."

He leaves the room and walks aimlessly down the corridor, listening to the echo of his footsteps. 

One friend, one enemy, one wild card. A target he doesn't want to kill. At least his first mission won't be boring. 


	8. prescience, planning, pudding

\  
Brad spends most of the next few hours in research, but eventually everything that he can do today is done. For lack of a more useful option, he goes to check his email. He has a reply already. 

`To: brad_c@doubles.com`  
From: oracle@doubles.com  
Subject: Re: Time critical question 

`Bradley,`

`> Have you ever had a recurring vision of the far future, and if so,`  
> when it was finally fulfilled, was it immediately apparent  
> why you were given that vision? 

`I had visions of you for two years before we met. I still don't know why, though things do become clearer as you begin to grow up. Does that answer your question? `

`H`

He stares at the screen, reading and rereading. She never told him, never said a word. Of course, she wouldn't. She didn't achieve her position by spilling her secrets to children. He's a little surprised she's told him now, and he wonders if she's seen Schuldig as well. Maybe just heard about him. The news must have spread by now. Telepaths are horrible gossips.

_Brad?_

It's Schuldig's voice in his head, like his thoughts have summoned him. 

_What?_

_I'm hungry and he says we have to wait for you before we can eat and my clothes smell weird and I don't like them._

_They smell clean. You'll get used to it. Where are you?_

He gets a mental image of Schuldig and Charles in the dining hall and sends his assent. 

He's impressed--and not just that Charles got Schuldig into clean clothes somehow. Schuldig's speech is already more lucid than it was this morning, and his mental speech, even from this distance, is surprisingly clear. 

When he reaches the dining hall, Schuldig is sitting on the table top, watching for him, smoking one of Charles' cigarettes. 

Brad pulls it out of his mouth and points to the chair. "Sit."

"Hey, that's mine!"

"I thought you wanted food?"

The server arrives just then, thank god, and Schuldig forgets about everything else. Brad stubs the cigarette out and raises an eyebrow at Charles. 

"He looked tense," Charles says, not quite smiling. "I thought it would help."

"He's a child!"

"He's much calmer now."

"He'd be calmer on tranqs, too, and they wouldn't rot his lungs."

"You're so American, Brad."

"No more cigarettes."

"Then next time, please pick someone else to bathe your tiny serial killer. I had to use whatever means were available to me."

Brad pauses, winding spaghetti on his fork. "Did he hurt you?"

"No. I did have to tell him you'd give him more chocolate though."

"I can hear both of you," Schuldig says. "You're only two feet away." _Also, telepath,_ he adds silently. 

"Point taken. No more smoking."

"I can if I want. You can't stop me."

"We'll see about that."

Schuldig stops eating then. Brad wonders if he's going to throw some sort of tantrum over this, but no, he's looking towards the door. 

It's Mark, just in time for their dinner meeting. He sits opposite the three of them, hands folded on the table, smiling. 

"Gentlemen," he says. "Brad. What's on the menu?" He's looking right at Schuldig when he says it. 

Brad stifles laughter. He almost hopes Mark tries something with Schuldig. That should be interesting. 

"Your eyes might be bigger than your stomach in this case," Brad says, because even Mark deserves a warning. He lays the mission folder out on the table and passes out photocopies. "Why don't we focus on what we can handle?" 

Mark gives him an odd look, but takes his mission summary in silence. 

"Our target is Daisy Miasnikov, 43, currently residing north of Irkutsk in Siberia. About ten years ago she started driving trucks for a company called Unisol, a defense contractor with the American government."

"And she defected back to the Soviet Union?" Charles asks, with a note of disbelief in his voice. 

"It does happen, occasionally," Brad says. "She took with her a lot of low level information she'd picked up, as well as photographs of the cargo she was hauling. The damage done with the information she provided was minimal, but--Schuldig, stop playing with your peas--"

Charles snickers, and Brad gives him a quelling look which has absolutely no effect. 

"But," Mark says, "the American intelligence community is big on revenge."

Brad nods, noting that Schuldig actually has stopped playing with his peas. Miraculous. "Someone in the community wants her dead, and they want the KGB to know about it. They're not willing to risk their own agents, but they're perfectly willing to pay Eszett. It's a simple enough mission. Most of our time will be spent getting there and getting back; most of our effort will spent in successfully crossing border checkpoints." 

"East German tourists?" Mark asks. He is quick if nothing else. 

"Yes. We'll have the requisite papers by tomorrow, and I'll put in a supplies request tonight. We'll need civilian clothes, but it'll be better to get those in East Berlin. From there, we'll fly to Moscow. I'm looking for a faster alternative to the Trans-Siberian Railway, but with no luck so far." 

Which is a lie; he hasn't had the time to check out that angle yet, but he is relatively sure the railway will be their best bet, especially if they are posing as tourists. Schuldig smirks at him. 

_Keep your mouth shut,_ Brad tells him silently. 

_What happened to being a team, huh, Brad?_

_Oh, shut up._

He looks up to find Mark watching them, eyes shifting back and forth between them.

"Question?" Brad asks him. 

Mark shakes his head silently. He looks less sure of himself now than Brad has ever seen him. Maybe he was counting on getting Schuldig on his side? Not an unreasonable plan, given the level of Schuldig's training and the similarity of their talents. 

"Charles? Questions?"

"We're leaving day after tomorrow?" Brad nods. "We'll need something besides these to wear to Berlin." Charles plucks at his uniform shirt. 

Brad nods. "Requisition something. I'll let you worry about that."

"Gosh, thanks."

"Got a job for me?" Mark asks. 

"Yes, actually. You can take care of the weapons. You know what we'll need. And take Schuldig down to the range in the morning. Give him something small caliber and make sure he knows where the safety is and how load it if nothing else."

All three of them look shocked, and Brad suppresses a smile. It's a good way to throw Mark off his guard, and besides, there is always the possibility that Schuldig will kill him and remove Brad's dilemma altogether. 

"Right," Mark says. "Sure. Is he staying with you tonight?" 

Mark's tone is suggestive, and Brad would like to be able to say no. But leaving Schuldig alone seems inadvisable. 

"Yes," he says. "Be there at nine." 

Mark nods and stands up. "If you'll excuse me then?"

Brad nods back and watches him go. "Well, Charles? I'm sure you have something to say at this point."

"Are you quite _insane_?"

"Maybe."

"Do I have to not hurt him, too?" Schuldig asks. 

"You can hurt him if he tries to hurt you first."

Schuldig narrows his eyes and stops making mountains out of his mashed potatoes. "He wants to kill you."

"I know."

"Can you hear what he's thinking, too?"

"No. He told me himself."

"Did he, now?" Charles murmurs. "That's new."

"It's his last chance at me until he graduates."

"I'll watch him."

Brad lets himself smile. "I know you will."

"I'll watch him, too," Schuldig says. 

Charles laughs. "Well, that should put the fear of God into him." He slides his chocolate pudding over to Schuldig, who falls on it like a junkie on his drug of choice. 

Brad watches them both and feels some tightness between his shoulder blades unwind slightly. He can do this. Not that he ever seriously doubted it, of course. But it's still something of a relief. 


	9. lost and found, not there, safety off

When Brad wakes up the next morning, Schuldig's cot is empty. Brad spares a second to sit on the edge of the bed with his face in his hands and wonder just exactly how he got himself into this. He knows it won't help, but it seems necessary. He wonders also how many of his future mornings will start like this. He's afraid to look. 

Someone knocks on the door, and he checks the clock quickly. Only eight. It can't be Mark yet. Better not be, at least. 

He pulls on his uniform quickly and opens the door. Blackie is standing there, one hand on Schuldig's shoulder. His eyes are creased in a smile that doesn't quite reach his mouth. 

"I believe this is yours?"

Schuldig scoots through the open door and behind Brad. He stands so close that his body heat is palpable through Brad's clothes. 

"Yes," Brad says to Blackie. "Thank you. Where did you find him?"

"In the White Room. He had left the door open, and it was making the other students a bit nervous."

"I'm sure it was." They'd probably thought he was dead. 

"I'd like to see him later," Blackie says. "Perhaps after his appointment with young Mark?"

Brad nods, feeling Schuldig's hand twist into the back of his shirt. "He'll be there." 

As soon as Blackie closes the door, Schuldig punches Brad in the side with the hand that's not clutching his shirt. It's not a very good punch, left-handed, and Schuldig is standing too close to put any force behind it. 

"Ow," Brad says anyway. "What was that for?"

"I'm not going with him!"

"Why not?"

"He's not real!" 

Brad frowns. "Excuse me?"

"Not real, not there!" Schuldig releases Brad's shirt to gesture with both hands towards the space where Blackie stood. "There's nothing in his head!"

"You get no thoughts from him?"

Schuldig shakes his head hard. "Maybe he's a ghost."

"He's not a ghost, don't be stupid."

"I'm not stupid! Shut up!" 

Brad takes a deep breath. "All right. You're not stupid. You felt nothing from him at all? Even when he touched you?"

Schuldig shakes his head again, scowling. "Told you. He's not really there." 

"He is really there, trust me. He's just-- You know how people's thoughts are dimmer here than back in the city?"

Schuldig nods.

"It's because they're shielding. If you were normal, you wouldn't be picking their thoughts up at all unless you tried. All this means is that Blackie can shield better than they can. It doesn't mean he's a ghost or an illusion. He's been in Eszett for years. He's had a lot of practice, that's all."

Schuldig seems to relax a little, but Brad feels himself growing more tense. Practice, even years of it, doesn't really explain why Blackie can shield better than Rosenkreuz's best telepath--well, second best now. Unless telepathy is Blackie's talent, but Brad has no more clue about that than he did the first day he got here. 

"And you are going to see him later," Brad adds. "So don't argue. Get some clothes on and we'll get breakfast." 

Schuldig's scowl lifts at the mention of food, and he picks up his clothes--crumpled on the floor of Brad's closet--and scrambles into them. 

"Okay, let's go!" he says, approximately twenty seconds later. Next time, Brad will have to time him. And then, as they are walking out the door, "I still don't like him."

"Don't kill him," Brad says automatically. 

Schuldig makes a face and stomps ahead of him, footfalls echoing off the stone. 

***

"It's a Browning Challenger, .22 caliber," Mark says. His fingers brush Schuldig's as he hands the gun over, and the dim cloud of anger and confusion that surrounds him becomes clearer. _Fucking bastard Crawford should--_

The touch passes, and by concentrating very hard on that mental wall thing the woman was talking about yesterday, Schuldig manages not to hear the rest of the thought. Although, he thinks, maybe he should be listening to things like that. He told Brad he'd watch Mark. 

It's strange, remembering so clearly what happened yesterday, what happened this morning, being able to sort through single events in his head. Everything stays separate now, all on its own. He wonders if that's normal, if that's how it is for everyone. He should ask Brad later. It's nothing like the blur his life has always been.

"Hold it like this," Mark says, and demonstrates. But he doesn't arrange Schuldig's hands on the gun, doesn't step any nearer than he has to. Mark is thinking about the rumors that say Schuldig can make people's heads explode. 

Schuldig grins. That would be pretty cool. Brad seems to think they can teach him things here; maybe they can teach him that. 

He puts his hands on the gun just as Mark showed him. It feels good. The basement room they stand in is close and warm, but the metal of the gun is cold. It cools his hands. The weight of it feels just right as he holds it away from his body, arms straight out as he's seen on TV. It's not too heavy, not too light. 

"I like it," he tells Mark. The barrel is smooth, a little slippery. The markings on it are worn down, but that doesn't matter. He couldn't read them anyway. "Is it mine now?"

Mark shrugs. "You can keep this one if you want. It's old, no one will miss it." He jerks his head toward the door. "Try it on the range before you decide." 

They walk down a short hall to the firing range, a large, echoing room with concrete floor, walls, and ceiling. On the far wall are human-shaped targets, cardboard cut-outs of men, women, children. Schuldig squints at them. Maybe they're not children. Maybe they're midgets. It's stupid to kill children. They never have anything worth taking. 

Mark gives him earmuff things to muffle the sound and shows him the right stance, still not touching him. Thinking: _What now, what to say, where's the lever?_

Schuldig doesn't understand the thought and ignores it, concentrating on the closest figure to him. He jerks the trigger back. Nothing happens. 

"Safety," Mark says, smirking. He reaches over and does something to the gun that Schuldig entirely misses while trying not to give in to the urge to hit that smirk until it goes away. 

Schuldig aims again and fires three shots, one after another. He can feel them going wild, feel the gun jerking in his hands, out of control. He throws it to the floor and gives it a kick that sends it skittering away over the concrete until it hits the opposite wall. It stops there, spinning. 

Mark walks over and picks it up, polishing the cool metal on his shirttail. He hands it back to Schuldig. 

"Don't worry," he says. "No one does well their first time." He smiles, and every thought in his head is of sex, of Brad and Schuldig together in Brad's small bed. 

Schuldig frowns. "That didn't happen."

"So you really can read right through people's shields. Interesting." His smile grows thinner, crooks up at one corner. The images Schuldig gets from him now are of Schuldig lying on a metal table, chest and stomach cut open, top of his skull removed while men in white coats poke at his brain. "I'm sure Ketterson finds it interesting. His superiors will, too." 

"I _can_ make your head explode," Schuldig lies. "You were wondering before." 

Mark's face goes sort of white. In his head there are more head-exploding images, and fear. Schuldig likes the fear a lot better than the smirk, and he didn't have to hit Mark even once. 

The fear doesn't last long though. By the time Schuldig is lining up the gun with the target again, Mark's hands are on him, steadying his grip, adjusting his stance. He's thinking about something, but Schuldig is concentrating hard enough to shut it out almost entirely. 

He's squeezing the trigger just like he was told to when Mark leans close to speak in his ear. He does his best to ignore that as well. 

Schuldig fires. His aim is off, and the bullet just grazes the outside edge of the figure's arm before pinging off the back wall. 

"Didn't you hear me?" Mark says. He sounds cross now. 

"No."

"I _said_ , Crawford murdered my brother." 

Schuldig looks at him, blinks once. "Okay." 

"Is that all you have to say?" 

"I don't care about your brother. I don't care about you."

Almost too fast to follow, Mark's hand flashes up and claps itself on Schuldig's cheek. It's almost a slap, except that the hand stays there. Mark's fingers dig lightly into Schuldig's skin. Mark stares at him hard, eyes narrowed. 

"You don't. You don't care about any of it. I thought you were just blocking me, but I'm not reading you because there's nothing to read. You're really..." He steps back, and his hand falls away. 

"What?" Schuldig asks. He takes aim again, but his shot is off again, even further this time. He curses and kicks the wall. "What?" he demands again. "I'm really what?"

"Amazing," Mark says softly. 

He isn't lying. His thoughts are full of admiration that Schuldig doesn't understand. The fear was better, but maybe this is more practical for now. If Mark can teach him how to make the gun work right, he really can make people's heads explode. 

He smiles and watches Mark's eyes widen. "Thanks," he says experimentally. It might be the first time he's ever said it. Brad did tell him to work on please and thank you, after all. 

"Do you want to--" Mark starts. His eyes run over Schuldig's face, neck, chest, and lower. The images in his head are too confused to make sense of. Schuldig doesn't think even Mark knows what the end of that question is. 

"Show me how to make this thing shoot straight," Schuldig says. 

Mark shakes his head a little. "Right. Sure. Anything you want." His thoughts say: _When Crawford's dead, you'll belong to me._

Schuldig rolls his eyes. What a fucking idiot. At least Brad doesn't think like a James Bond bad guy. He kicks Mark in the shin. 

" _Now_ ," he says. 


	10. Blackie, ghosts, plans

After Brad drops Schuldig off at Blackie's door, with only a minor twinge of guilt at the expression on Schuldig's face--somewhere between rage and pleading--he has a thousand things to do. Talk to Charles, talk to Mark, talk to Ketterson and the documents division, etc. He does it all, and he concentrates on each and every thing.

His single-minded focus turns out to be less helpful than he'd hoped. He finishes even more quickly than he normally would and is left with nothing to do but pace his room and fidget. 

The source of his fidgets is twofold: number one is the mission, of course. He deeply regrets delegating anything, even given the very good reasons he had for doing it. Everything Brad can do himself is now done, and he gets to worry about the rest of it until they leave. Fun. 

Number two is Blackie; what Blackie might be doing with Schuldig; what Schuldig might be doing to Blackie. What Blackie's talent is, if he even has one beyond a frightening intelligence and at least sixty years experience staying alive in Eszett, which, all right, is a damn useful talent. Brad doesn't like mysteries. He put Blackie out of his mind years ago as one he couldn't solve, but he's back now. Again, fun. 

Brad swears, climbs onto his bed, and twists himself into lotus position. Meditation is still one of the more useful skills he's learned, not that he'd admit it to anyone here. 

Half an hour later, Schuldig bursts in and slams the door behind him. He stands with his back against the door, and Brad gets a buzzing jumble of thoughts in his head all at once. They come too fast to pick any one thing out. 

"Sit down," he tells Schuldig. "Breathe." 

_FUCK YOU_. 

It's almost deafening, from the inside out. Brad winces. "I'm glad you've remembered how to communicate using actual words. Maybe you could find some more useful ones." 

Schuldig's shoulders sag, and he shuffles across the room and climbs up on the bed beside Brad. "He's weird. I don't like him."

"Much better. Why?"

"He's _weird_. He wanted me to play chess. And he made me do all this stuff with blocking people and listening to people who were way far away, and I have a fucking _headache_. And he was sitting right there like, like-- Are you sure he's not a ghost?"

It would explain a lot, actually. Schuldig's eyes widen slightly, clearly catching the thought.. "He's not," Brad says. 

"How do you--"

"All right, fine," Brad says. The library has a fairly substantial section on ghosts, poltergeists, and other paranormal phenomena, so he can't very well say they don't exist. "What if he is? Are you scared of ghosts?"

He is expecting an instant denial, but Schuldig seems to think about it for a while. 

"I don't know," he says, at last. "I saw one once, but it didn't do anything. I think it was my mother."

Brad works very hard at not letting any readable thoughts come together in his brain, though there's no way to conceal the surprise he feels. "Do you remember your mother?" he asks. 

"No. But she looked like me. The ghost."

"What did she do?"

"I _told_ you. Nothing."

"She must've done _something_."

"She just stood there and said stuff I couldn't hear. And then she left." 

It's essentially the first thing Schuldig has volunteered about his past. Brad is almost touched, though he fights the feeling. Relieved, as well; he wasn't sure Schuldig remembered anything at all of the first however-many years of his life. 

"But she wasn't weird?" he asks. And then the rest of what Schuldig said about Blackie catches up with him. "And who did he ask you to listen to?"

"People. She wasn't weird."

"What, she didn't make you play chess? No, never mind. What people?"

"A girl." 

" _What_ girl?"

Schuldig shrugged. "This girl. She lived near the ocean. She had dark hair and weird dreams. Don't know anything else." 

"Do you know her name?" Brad asks, as neutrally as he can. 

Schuldig glares briefly at him. "I just said I didn't know anything else."

"Yeah. Okay." There is silence for a minute or so.

"Brad?"

"Hm?"

"Are we leaving soon?"

"Yeah."

"And we're going to kill that woman and then come back?"

"Yes." 

"Then what?"

Oh. Brad was hoping to avoid that question for a little while longer. He sighs. "Then I graduate, get assigned to a field team, and you finish your schooling here. Without killing anyone."

"You don't have to keep saying that."

"I think I probably do." 

Schuldig picks at the cuff of his shirt and pulls his feet up onto the bed. "I don't want to stay here."

Brad smiles a little. "No one wants to stay here."

"You didn't want to either."

"No." 

"You hated them." Schuldig looks up at him. "You still hate them. A lot."

"That's a secret."

Schuldig nods, and then yawns enormously. He slumps against Brad's side. 

"It's been a long day," Brad says. "You could sleep before dinner."

"Don't wanna," Schuldig mumbles, but his eyes are already closed. 

_I'm taking a child to murder someone,_ Brad thinks, but it has no real impact. He was going out with Ketterson's team by the time he was thirteen, and anyway Schuldig is hardly an innocent. He feels like it _should_ though. 

Someone knocks on his door. Brad doesn't answer. Either it's someone who really needs to see him, or it's someone who will go away and leave him in peace. The door opens. It's Charles. 

"Well," Charles says. "This is sweet."

"Oh, shut up." 

"Daddy Brad. Never thought I'd live to see that."

"One more comment and it'll be the last thing you see." 

Charles laughs and sits on the foot of the bed. "I imagine I'm safe until we get back from the mission. Which, by the way, we're ready for. We can leave anytime."

Brad raises his eyebrows. "A day ahead of schedule."

"What can I say? We're just that fucking efficient."

"In the morning, then. We'll take an extra day in Berlin. Do some shopping."

"Shopping?"

"The civilian clothes. And a few other things." 

Charles nods. "Don't tell me what you're planning until we're clear of this place. In fact, don't feel you need to tell me at all." 

"What makes you think I'm planning something beyond our mission objective?"

"I've known you for eight years. And I pay attention." He stands and waves over his shoulder as he leaves. "See you at dinner." 

It's a little disturbing that Charles knows him that well, especially since Brad doesn't really know what he's planning himself, yet. But if he does kill Daisy, Ketterson will have won. He's let Ketterson win a lot of battles since he arrived here. This is the first one that's seemed important. 


	11. Berlin, sex, salt

Berlin is a grey city, but the sun overhead is bright, and the sky is a clear blue that reminds Brad of Nevada. It makes the city seem welcoming in a way nowhere has seemed to him since he left the States. Or maybe it's only that he's free--almost--for the first time since Ketterson got his hooks in him. 

It's intoxicating. He can go anywhere, do anything, get drunk, start fights, have sex with completely inappropriate people. It's too bad, then, that he doesn't really want to do any of those things. He's hammered the habit of control into himself too well, he thinks, and maybe it's a little pathetic that he feels this much sheer joy just sitting alone in the small cafe next to the hotel drinking coffee. 

He doesn't even particularly like coffee and would rather have had hot chocolate, but he doesn't want to stand out even that much. Besides, the bitterness of the drink seems appropriate in some way. It's a taste he'll acquire, he decides. 

For now, there's sun coming through the window to warm his hands, and everything is quiet. 

Somehow, he doesn't need his talent to tell him that the next person through the door of the cafe will be Schuldig. It's inevitable. 

Schuldig sits across from him and steals his coffee, drinking it in fast gulps despite its heat. "Mark wants to have sex with me," he says. 

Brad puts his hands over his face for a moment. He could laugh, he really could. "How do you know?" he says instead. 

"He dreamed about it last night, a lot. And he was still thinking about it when he woke up." 

"I'll switch rooms with you tonight."

Schuldig frowns. "That's stupid. He wants to kill you."

"Keep your voice down." 

"Well, he does. Anyway, the sex could be okay. It feels good, right? Almost everyone likes it." 

Brad is actually speechless for a few seconds. "You can't-- You are not having sex with Mark," he hisses in English. 

"Why not?"

"You don't even like him!" 

"So?"

"You're supposed to do it with people you like," Brad says, aware that this is a holdover from his childhood and hopelessly foreign to almost everyone he knows now. "Anyway, you're too young." 

"I am not! I can get hard-ons and make myself come so I don't see why I couldn't do it with someone else too." 

Brad opens his mouth and shuts it again. There's no way to express how much he doesn't want to be having this conversation. 

"You are not having sex with Mark," he says, finally. "Don't argue, just don't. You're not. In fact, you're not having sex with anyone until you're at least--fifteen," he says, picking a number more or less out of the air. It's still two years younger than he was, but telepaths tend to get a head start in most things. 

He thinks Schuldig's going to pitch a fit in the middle of the cafe, but he only looks sullen for a moment. He steals Brad's coffee again and emerges from the cup all smiles. "Sure, Brad. Whatever you say." 

Brad's actually quite pleased by the blatant lie. Schuldig's learning self control and a little bit of cunning to go with his brute force, and it's been less than a week. He might survive until he's eighteen after all. 

"Right," Brad says. "I trust you completely." In a way, it's true. He does trust Schuldig--to do exactly what Schuldig wants to do. "Let's go."

"Where?"

Brad waits until they're outside to answer. "Shopping."

"For clothes?"

"No. Charles is doing that. For other things."

"What other things?"

Something that can simulate blood, he thinks, not much caring if Schuldig picks it up or not. Either way, he's not saying it out loud, even in English. It's a stupid plan, more of a back-up in case he can't make himself complete the mission. He knows he shouldn't be thinking like that. He needs to make up his mind, here, now. He needs to be sure. But he isn't. 

So, fake blood. Blanks for his gun, too, and chloroform, painkillers, alcohol, something for a tourniquet. The list gets longer and longer in his head, and he starts to think that killing her might be kinder. The alternative is amputation miles away from the nearest hospital, performed by someone who only just got his first aid certification. 

He'd have to leave her there, unconscious, bleeding, in pain. Even if he could manage to send help for her from the nearest town, there's no guarantee she'd still be alive when they got there. 

Either way, he's going to do a horrible thing to someone who was kind to him. 

"I'll do it if you want," Schuldig says. 

Brad glances down at him. "Oh?"

Schuldig nods. "I've ki-- done that to lots of people. I don't mind." 

Brad shakes his head. "It's...kind of you to offer," he says carefully, because the last thing he wants is to discourage Schuldig from being helpful, even if he could really do without this kind of help. "But it's my responsibility." _And I want to be able to change my mind at the last second,_ he thinks, and wishes he hadn't. 

***

Back in the room he and Charles shared last night, Brad dumps his supplies on the rickety table by the window. Charles is stretched out on the bed, smoking. A pile of shopping bags lies by his feet, and he's wearing clothes that have never seen the inside of Rosenkreuz. 

"What on Earth did you get?" he asks Brad. 

"Stuff," Brad says. "Salt for the hand."

"Salt?"

"I think it's unrealistic to expect to be able to keep it on ice all the way back to Germany." 

Charles wrinkles his nose. "Oh. Yes, you have a point." 

Brad pauses in unpacking his supplies and repacking them into suitcases. "We have to switch rooms. I'll be staying with Mark tonight."

"No, you won't."

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, don't get all--" Charles waves a hand at him. "Like that. I'm not challenging your authority, for god's sake. Mark wants to kill you. He doesn't want to kill me. If you want to separate him and your green-haired time bomb, it only makes sense to put me in with him." 

Brad goes back to his repacking, unsure how to reply to that. It's true, but he and Schuldig have at least some defense against Mark. Charles doesn't, and Brad's glad Charles can't read his mind right now; the image of throwing a kitten to a crocodile isn't very flattering. 

Charles interrupts his thoughts by throwing a balled up sock at his head. "Have a little faith, Brad. Just a little. I'm not asking for the sort moves mountains or anything. And keep in mind that I'll be dealing with him for another year after you leave." 

Brad shoves the plastic bin full of salt into a bag and zips the bag shut, hand and eyes lingering on the black canvas as he hesitates. But Charles is right. 

"Do have to be so logical? It pisses me off."

One corner of Charles' mouth twitches upwards. "That's why I do it so seldom."

"Fine. Move your stuff, then."

Brad watches him pack with a sense of resignation. There is no aspect of this mission that's going to go the way he'd like it to. He's starting to get used to it. 


	12. wall, fun, lightning

The next morning, Charles lets himself into Brad and Schuldig’s room and tosses a newspaper on the bed. "Honecker’s resigned. The demonstrations are getting bigger. Wait about a month, I’d say, and you won’t have to worry about the border crossing. They’ll pull the Wall down with their bare hands." 

Brad stares at the solemn face of East Germany’s previous leader. Underneath is a picture of his replacement, Egon Krentz, dour expression and terrible tie. "We should’ve gone in through Hungary," he says. 

"Hungary’s a mess."

"Czechoslovakia then." 

Charles lights a cigarette and opens the window. "Too late now." 

It is too late now. They’re on a schedule. "We’ll go in through the Chauseestrasse checkpoint."

"Didn’t they just shoot someone there a few months ago?"

"That was the Stasi, not border control. And anyway, they weren’t supposed to."

"I’m sure that’ll be quite comforting when I’m buried in an unmarked grave." 

Brad flicks a piece of wadded up paper at him. "It means they’re less likely to shoot after getting told off for it. And anything’ll be better than Friedrichstrasse." 

"You don’t want the romance of going through Checkpoint Charlie?" 

"I want to get in quietly, do what we have to, and leave as soon as possible."

"Yes, that sounds like you," Charles says. "Do we have West Berlin papers?" 

"Not great ones, but yes. I’ll need you and Mark to— Where is Mark? Did you let him out on his own?" 

Mark opens the door with a dramatic sweep of his arm and a still more dramatic bow. "Good morning, gentlemen. Talking about me behind my back again?"

"Always," Charles says sweetly. 

"Enough," Brad says. "Mark, I’ll need you to make sure the guards don’t care enough to take more than a cursory look at our papers. Charles, if you can make the weather unpleasant enough that they just wave us through rather than come outside to chat, all the better." 

"Breakfast," Schuldig says, loudly. 

"Shut up. Is that clear?"

"Breakfast!" 

Brad sits on the bed next to him and shoves a pillow over his face. _Breakfast soon. Mission now,_ he thinks. Schuldig kicks him sharply in the side, and muffled giggles come from under the pillow. 

"Clear," Charles says, smiling. 

"Clear," Mark says. "Shall I take your little monster for breakfast?"

"We’ll all go together." 

*

They pack up that night and head for Chauseestrasse. They go around seven. It’s dark, and the crossing isn’t busy, but they aren’t the only ones in line either. Two people ahead of them get turned back. No one gets shot. Brad nods to Charles and Mark. 

Charles closes his eyes and sways a little until Brad puts a hand on his elbow. He’s said before that the first part is the hardest, the gathering of energy and meshing it perfectly with the air currents and temperature fluctuations around them. 

They shuffle forward. After a minute or two, Charles opens his eyes, and a fine cold mist starts to fall. The temperature drops, and the wind picks up. People in line around them grumble and pull their coats tighter. 

"That’s it?" Schuldig says. 

"We don’t want anything too sudden or too noticeable."

"Why not?" 

Brad leans down and speaks quietly. "Because people get excited by the unusual, and we don’t want the guards to be excited. We want them to be bored. So don’t do anything exciting, okay?" 

Schuldig sighs. 

Brad glances at Mark. It’s impossible to tell when Mark is using his gift, as Brad knows to his detriment. He isn’t even looking at the guards, but he’s not looking at Schuldig either. Given that his attention has been fixed on Schuldig almost constantly since they left Rosenkreuz, he probably has his head in the game. 

The guards check a woman’s papers and wave her through. Their glance at the next man’s papers is more cursory. One of the guards retreats to the hut, muttering about coffee. The rain picks up from a mist to a steady drip. Brad casts his mind forward again and, again, foresees no problems. 

They all shuffle forward. 

The first guard comes back out with coffee. The second ducks inside. Another two people are passed through. Brad nudges Schuldig. Everyone else knows the first rule of Rosenkreuz. It’s so ingrained that he hadn’t thought to mention it when they were reviewing contingency plans. 

_Whatever happens, don’t get caught,_ he thinks. 

Schuldig looks at him like he’s crazy. He obviously has no intention of allowing himself to be caught, and Brad’s mind is briefly full of the carnage he could cause, given an opportunity. He sees a circle of bodies, streaming blood from the eyes and ears. Schuldig tilts his head in question, maybe feeling Brad’s concern, expecting an order to keep the destruction to a minimum. But that’s not the way it’s done. You don’t get caught. Ever. 

Brad just nods, and Schuldig’s attention drifts away to the people around them, to the guards, to the rain falling on his upturned palm. Brad wonders if he has any real memory from before of rain, of snow, of anything at all that’s entirely his own and not battered to mush by the thousand voices in his head. 

He’s thinking so hard about Schuldig that he doesn’t notice the rain pick up until thunder booms like a stuck gong and everyone in line jumps. The rain turns to sleet, turns to snow, and lightning illuminates the startled faces of the guards, who suddenly seem much more awake and aware. Charles, on the other hand, seems to have shrunk in on himself, shoulders stooped, eyes dull. Mark has a very faint smile on his face. 

Schuldig, naturally, looks delighted. Brad has a brief glimpse of him with his face turned up toward the snow and the lightning, lit up from within as well as without, hands reaching for the sky. 

"Charles," Brad hisses. He shakes his shoulder. 

The line moves forward. They’re next. One guard frowns as Brad shakes Charles again. "Your documents," the guard says. 

Charles shakes it off all of a sudden, like waking from a dream. He rubs a hand over his face. Brad can see his other hand tracing symbols in the air that he recognizes as memory devices. Charles hasn’t needed them for years. 

The lighting stops abruptly. The snow turns to hail, first the size of peas and then the size of walnuts. The guards swear. Mark is patiently holding out their papers. One guard flips through them, makes sure their photos match, and opens the gate. He retreats back into the hut. A few people give up on the crossing. The others huddle against the concrete barricades and pull their coats up over their heads. 

Brad and his party walk through the open gate into East Berlin. 

"What the hell was that?" Brad says to Mark. He keeps his voice calm, for all the good it does him. He has no way to conceal the depth of his rage from an empath, no matter how good his shields. 

"Just an accident," Mark says. "I got a little apathy and despair on poor Charles, that’s all. It’s not my fault his control slipped."

"I’m sorry," Charles whispers. He stumbles to a stop under a streetlamp to light a cigarette. His face is gray, and his hands are shaking. Schuldig has to hold the lighter for him. 

"It’s not your fault," Brad tells him. 

"No, it’s yours," Mark says. "Why didn’t you see this coming?" 

Brad has no answer. He looked. Why didn’t he see it? "The hotel," he says. "Come on." 

Their hotel is on Neue Hochstrasse, near the Dorotheen Cemetery. The woman at the desk looks over their wet clothes with disapproval and sets her glasses on the counter before leafing slowly through a book for their reservation. Still more slowly, she produces keys. No offer is made to show them to their rooms, which are up a flight of poorly lit steps and to the left. 

"I’m hungry," Schuldig says. 

"You ate literally an hour ago, you bottomless pit," Charles tells him, sounding a little steadier now. 

"Take him to get something to eat," Brad says. "Bring something back for us." He’s looking at Mark, and so he can’t see Charles’s face, but he can hear the worried quality of his silence. "I just gave you an order," Brad says. 

Schuldig and Charles dump their bags in the hall and start back down the stairs. Brad unlocks the nearest room. He puts their stuff inside. He tries to calm his mind. He has years of practice with Ketterson, but it is much easier not to think than not to _feel_. 

Finally, he turns to Mark. "It wasn’t an accident," he says. "I would’ve foreseen an accident." 

"Maybe you’re just not as good as everyone thinks you are. Lin told me you didn’t even mean to kill my brother. You just fucked up." 

He hadn’t meant to kill Dieter. The urge to defend himself is peculiarly strong. Brad can’t tell if the guilt is his own or if Mark is projecting it onto him. Breathe. Focus. "If it wasn’t an accident, then it was a deliberate choice. You purposely endangered the mission."

A little fear flickers over Mark’s face at that. If rule one is _don’t get caught_ , rule two is _mission first_. Above your life, above your teammates’ lives, above any other loyalty except allegiance to Rosenkreuz. Brad could kill Mark for this and be well within his rights. Mark knows it. 

"It was just a little fun," Mark says. "I wanted to see how the kid would handle it. There was never any real danger. I could’ve fixed it."

"But you didn’t. Charles did." 

"Barely," Mark said, with a sneer. 

"He did his job. You didn’t do yours. I don’t have room on this team for people who can’t pull their weight." He waits, but Mark won’t look at him. "When did you decide to have your _fun?"_

"Did you see him looking at the rain? Like he’d never seen it before. I just thought he’d like to see something a little more impressive." 

Brad closed his eyes briefly. An impulsive decision, one he couldn’t have foreseen. Worse, one based on Mark’s growing obsession with Schuldig, which meant it could easily happen again. He’d felt safer when Mark’s only obsession was killing him. 

"This doesn’t happen again," Brad says. 

"Sure," Mark says. "I’ll be good. I promise." He’s already looking toward the window, waiting for Schuldig’s return.


	13. tired, owned, friend

They get on the Trans-Siberian Railway in Moscow. For the first day, it’s great. Schuldig sits with his nose pressed to the window watching the landscape roll by. He is used to cities. This is the most space he has ever seen. The most emptiness. It fascinates him, the thought of all that land without people. Brad tells him it will get even emptier the farther they go, but that seems impossible, and Schuldig isn’t at all sure he believes it. 

Brad tilts his head a little, looking up from his crossword. "You’d like Nevada, too. Montana. Death Valley. We’ll go someday." 

"Was there a war there?"

"Where?"

"In Death Valley."

"Oh. No, not that kind of death. It’s hot, and there’s no water, not much food. A lot of people died trying to cross it before there were cars and roads." 

"Is there this much of it?" Schuldig says, still looking out the window. 

"No, but when you’re in it, it seems like there is." 

"When will we go? When we’re done with this mission?"

"Someday," Brad says, and his voice sounds odd. 

Schuldig doesn’t care for that sound. He gets up and leaves their compartment to wander up and down the car.

*

"Are we there yet?" Schuldig says. He’s lying on his stomach on the floor, trying to tie Brad’s shoelaces into knots without Brad noticing. It’s not going very well. 

Brad jerks his foot away yet again. "Where did you even hear that?" 

"In your head, you’re thinking it _all the time,"_ Schuldig says. 

"I’ll stop if you will." 

"You won’t. You’re so boring. This train is so boring. This mission is stupid. When are we going to get there? Why couldn’t I get off the train when we stopped before?"

"Because you’re not a tourist, and because you’re better at getting into trouble than anyone I’ve ever met."

"I always get out of it again." 

"I don’t want you drawing attention to us." 

Schuldig makes a play for his shoelaces again. Brad pokes him in the ribs with his toe. He thinks of it as a kick, but Schuldig’s been kicked plenty of times. This doesn’t even hurt. Brad doesn’t want to hurt him. He latches onto Brad’s shin with both arms. 

Brad finally sets his crossword down (the same one? How long can it take to do one crossword? Schuldig can do them without knowing any of the words, someone nearby always knows them) and rubs at his face. Tired face. Brad sleeps every night, but he doesn’t stop being tired. 

"Are you thirteen or five?" Brad says. "Act your age. Let go." 

"I don’t know how old I am, so how can I act my age?"

"Let’s assume you’re thirteen. Act that age." 

Schuldig digs in his fractured memories for thirteen year old interests and mannerisms. It’s mostly TV, because TV doesn’t confuse him like other minds do. Some stuff from Rosenkreuz after the teacher there showed him how to shield. A little from West Berlin. 

He throws himself dramatically back onto the floor. "You’re always telling me what to do! I’m old enough to make my own decisions, you’re not my dad, why can’t I wear what I want? I don’t tell _you_ who to hang out with. I’m hungry, I wanna go to McDonald’s." 

Brad is smiling at him, just a little, and he looks less tired. "You’re out of luck with McDonald’s." 

"I’ve never had it. I don’t think." 

"We’ll go when we get back to West Berlin. You’ll like the milkshakes. They might even shut you up for five minutes." 

Schuldig sticks his tongue out at him. 

"Go bother Charles," Brad says. "He’s probably bored too." 

Schuldig hauls himself up off the floor with a deep sigh and shuffles out of the compartment. In the corridor, he straightens, jumps up and down a couple of times, and then pushes open the door of the compartment next to his and Brad’s. Charles isn’t there, but Mark is. 

"When I jump up, how come the train doesn’t keep moving without me?" Schuldig says. 

"Because when you jump you’re going as fast as the train is and you don’t stay in the air long enough to lose that momentum. We’re stopping in Omsk pretty soon. Do you want to get off?"

"Yes!" 

"Okay." Mark smiles at him, nothing like Brad’s smile. "It’s a secret. Don’t tell anyone or we’ll get in trouble." 

"I won’t tell." 

Mark’s smile grows. Schuldig pushes at his mind. He recognizes the barrier that’s supposed to keep him out, but it’s almost completely transparent. Mark thinks that if they do something bad together he’ll be able to get Schuldig to do something he wants by threatening to tell Brad about it. As if Schuldig cares what Brad knows. As long as he doesn’t know in time to stop them, it’s fine. 

"One hour," Mark says. 

Schuldig nods. He goes to steal some money from the man three compartments down so he’ll be able to buy things when they get off. 

*

Schuldig doesn’t think much of Omsk. The sky is gray, and the people are gray, and the bread they find to buy is also faintly gray. There is no chocolate anywhere. It wasn’t really worth getting off the train. 

"Can we see a movie?" Schuldig says. 

"There isn’t time. Even if there’s a theater, and I don’t know if there is."

"Can we get a dog?"

Mark frowns at him. "What do you want a dog for?" 

"I don’t know. What about a motorcycle?"

"Can you ride a motorcycle?"

"Can’t be that hard. Can I shoot my gun some more?"

Mark stops dead and turns to stare at him. "The gun from Rosenkreuz? You still have that?"

"You said I could keep it." 

"You crossed the border with a fucking gun?" 

"Why not?"

"What if they’d searched you? What if they’d seen it? Does Brad know?"

"You said I could keep it!" 

Marks stares at him for a few more seconds and then shakes his head. "You’re unbelievable." And underneath that, a strong flavor of possession, or the desire to possess. 

Schuldig’s familiar with that flavor, but not usually in relation to himself. It’s almost the way Ketterson thinks about Brad, but Ketterson doesn’t have Brad any more than Mark has Schuldig. Wanting things makes you stupid, Schuldig decides. Or maybe it’s just wanting people. You can’t really have people. They’re not like chocolate. 

"Can’t we do _something_ interesting?" he says, since it looks like he’s not allowed to shoot anything. 

"You killed a lot of people when they brought you in," Mark says. 

"Not enough." 

"It’s good that you’re with Rosenkreuz though. How would we have met otherwise?" 

"We wouldn’t have."

Mark’s eyes narrow a little. "You need a friend, Schuldig. You think Brad’s your friend, but he isn’t." 

Friend. Most of the context he has for the word is from TV, but there is more recent life experience connected with it. "Charles and Brad are friends." 

"Yeah, sure. They’ve known each other since they were kids." 

"Have you known them that long?"

"Yes. But we’re not friends." 

"Why not?" 

Mark is staring again. "I told you he killed my brother." _Not all there mentally, gift too strong, brains addled._

That’s stupid. Schuldig’s mind is clearer than ever. He just doesn’t understand. "You can’t be friends with him because he killed your brother?" 

Mark’s thoughts shift around each other and rearrange themselves into a new pattern. "My brother was the most important thing I had. Would you be friends with someone who stole your most important thing from you?" 

"No," Schuldig says. He’s never had much, but if someone steals from him, he usually kills them. His definition of friendship is still tenuous, but he knows it doesn’t include murder. "I tried to kill Brad a little." 

"You did? Why didn’t it work?" 

"We were in the White Room. It’s quieter there. I can’t push as hard. Everything’s soft." 

"You nearly killed him with your talent, in the White Room, with the dampers on? Fuck," Mark says softly. "Why didn’t you try again?" 

Schuldig shrugs. Brad gave him chocolate and food and clothes that didn’t make him itch. Brad doesn’t want to possess him. Brad wants to keep him safe. He’s not sure that’s friendship, but it’s also not a reason to kill him. And now they’re going on an adventure, and Schuldig’s already seen snow with lightning and huge spaces, and it smells different here, even in the city, even though he doesn’t like the food. It’s different. He likes different. But explaining that to Mark seems like a lot of work. 

"I’d do it if I could," Mark says. 

"I know." 

"Have you ever heard anyone say that the enemy of your enemy is your friend?"

"No."

"Do you know what it means?"

It means that Mark thinks they should kill Brad together. That’s interesting. An alliance is easier to understand than friendship and much easier to understand than Brad. 

"He’s smarter than you are," Schuldig says. 

Mark wants to hit him. Schuldig gets ready to duck, but the blow doesn’t come. He’s a little disappointed. If Mark had hit him, it might’ve been okay to shoot him. Things would be less complicated if Mark were dead. 

"Smart doesn’t matter," Mark says, low and vicious. "He thinks he’s smart, but it won’t help him. It won’t help him in the end." 

They go back to the train after that, and Schuldig goes to the far end of their car. Mark’s mind is giving him a headache. 

Charles is smoking out an open window as the train starts rolling again. Schuldig sits next to him. 

"Hello, monster," Charles says. "Did you have a nice time?"

"No. Did you tell Brad I left?"

"No. He’s got enough to worry about." 

"Can I have a cigarette?" 

Charles hands him one. They smoke together, and Schuldig is able to block out Mark’s seething anger again. His mind goes quiet and still like the Siberian countryside. 

"Why are you friends with Brad?" he asks. 

Charles blinks down at him. "Well. Because he helped me a lot when we were younger. Protected me. Because we get along. He’s a decent person. There aren’t many of those at Rosenkreuz." 

"Am I decent?" 

"Definitely not," Charles says, but he’s smiling, and he messes up Schuldig’s hair

"But you like me anyway."

"Yeah, suppose I do. You’re all right." 

Schuldig nods and takes another drag on his cigarette. He decides he might like Charles too.


	14. irkutsk, as deep as forever, motorbike

They get off the train at Irkutsk, near Lake Baikal. Brad was hoping that, by this time, Schuldig might be up to implanting false memories of their continued presence on the train, but that’s a definite no. Even assuming he had the capability, which he might, Brad wouldn’t trust him not to leave people with memories of them being abducted by aliens, just for fun. He has to depend on Mark giving their neighbors in the car the emotional impression of their continued presence, which will hold up for about five minutes if anyone asks them about it. Still, no one’s likely to ask. 

It’s still more than a day’s travel to where Daisy lives, due north. The village, if there is one, doesn’t appear on any map. Brad has latitude and longitude and that’s all. He’s hoping there will be a road, but he’s not counting on it. 

"I want to see the lake," Schuldig says. "The book says it’s the deepest one in the world." 

"What book?" Brad asks. 

"I think that would be the guidebook he stole from our neighbors," Charles says. 

Mark sneezes and wipes his nose sullenly. He has developed a streaming cold and has tissue stuffed up his nose and half his face muffled in a scarf. 

Brad takes a moment to wonder which ancient, vengeful gods brought this upon him. He’d had such hopes for his final exam. A smooth, professional operation. Instead, he has tourists, thieves, and invalids. "I’m going to find us transportation to the target," he says. 

"Shall I take your little monster to see the lake?" Charles asks. 

"Yes!" Schuldig says. 

Brad sighs. "Yeah, fine. Go. Be back at the hotel in an hour. Mark…take drugs. Or something.”

Mark mutters that he’ll take a nap and shuffles toward the stairs. 

Charles is stifling a grin. 

"Just go," Brad tells him. 

They go. 

An hour later, Brad has yet to procure anything he’s certain will handle the potentially rough terrain between here and their destination. He can’t be too specific in his requests. They’ve switched out their West Berlin papers for East Berlin, but they’re still foreigners, and their movements are constricted. He was prepared for the possibility that they might have to steal something, but he’s not happy about it. 

Nor is he happy when Charles and Schuldig don’t make it back when their hour is up. 

He goes up to check on Mark and finds him asleep under all the blankets from all the beds. "Up," he says. 

"Fug you," Mark mutters. 

"They aren’t back. We might have trouble." 

Mark groans and throws back the covers. He blows his nose loudly, collects his pack, and stands miserably by the door. Brad gets his things. It’s unlikely there is any trouble beyond Schuldig being Schuldig, but, if there is, they need to be ready to move immediately. 

*

"I want to go on the boat," Schuldig says. 

"Nope." 

"You’ve said that seven times." 

"We’re meeting Brad at the hotel in fifteen minutes. That’s not enough time for a boat ride."

"But—"

"It is enough time for ice cream, barely, if you don’t whine too much."

Schuldig shuts his mouth. 

They don’t actually find ice cream, but there is a bakery near a wooden church that sells them small, spiced cookies. They eat them out of a bag while they walk. Schuldig drags Charles back for one more look at the lake and hangs over the railing to stare into it. 

"How deep is it?" he says. 

"Goes down forever, I expect. The center of the Earth." 

That means he doesn’t know, but Schuldig likes the idea of water as deep as forever. "Are there any people at Rosenkreuz who can breathe underwater?"

"Not now, but it’s in the books. They could do with water what pyrokinetics can do with fire, but they were even more unstable. Prone to dissolving themselves entirely. The last one died about fifty years ago." 

"Do they die if they dissolve?"

Charles frowned, and Schuldig looked over at him, watching thought patterns reform in his brain. "I don’t know," Charles said, finally. "Perhaps not. Perhaps they live forever." 

"What if all the water really used to be people?" 

"That’s a dreadful thought."

"Why?"

"Do you want to go swimming in people?"

"I don’t want to go swimming at all." 

Charles glanced at him. "That reminds me. Have you had a bath since we left Germany?"

"I washed! I’m not itchy." 

"Lack of fleas is not the bare minimum of cleanliness you should be striving for. Come on, we’d better head back." 

Schuldig sighs and stuffs another cookie in his mouth. They start back toward the hotel. Up ahead, he can see four guys on motorcycles pull over and enter a shop. One of the motorcycles is reddish orange. He really likes the color. The keys are still in the ignition. 

*

Brad wishes they had radios, but Rosenkreuz doesn’t spring for that kind of thing, not for students. He does, however, have a telepath. How far away can Schuldig hear him? Even Ketterson is limited in range to a city block or so.

_Schuldig? SCHULDIG?_

_Ow, don’t be so loud._

_Where are you?_

_Coming back. What kind of car did you get, is it cool?_

_Haven’t got one yet._

There’s a pause, and then: _Do you like motorcycles? I like motorcycles._

Brad has about twenty seconds to cherish his feeling of impending doom before it’s replaced by something much closer to panic. They round a corner. Schuldig shoots past, whooping, on a red motorbike. Charles is standing next to three others, yelling after him. The owner of the bike is just coming out the door. 

Brad shuts everything else out and focuses hard on the immediate future. Those are off road bikes. They have gas cans. Thirty six percent chance they’ll make it out of the city without being caught. Assuming that, near one hundred percent certainty they’ll reach their target. _Or_ get Schuldig back here, talk to the police, hope their papers stand up to scrutiny, their movements monitored, timeline delayed— The choice is obvious. 

Brad runs the last few feet to where the bike’s owner is shouting into Charles’s face. He kicks him in the stomach and then shoves him into a wall head first. "On the bikes," he says. "We’re going. If we get split up, meet at checkpoint one."

"Fug," Mark says again, much more loudly, but Brad can hear him and Charles right behind him as they roar down the street. 

He can hear sirens too, but the three of them have been trained in defensive and offensive driving techniques on everything from snowmobiles to tanks. The weak link is, at least theoretically, Schuldig, who Brad can now barely see in the distance, zipping between cars with shrieks of glee. 

Brad wishes he knew the city better. He knows the major streets, but a car chase was never part of the plan. He tries to bring the maps to mind. They should be heading north— 

Abruptly, the map is in his head, so thoroughly that for a moment he can’t see the street ahead of him. _Does that help?_ Schuldig asks. 

It does. _Fall back. Get behind me. If the other two lose us, keep them updated on our location._

_Are you sure we can’t leave Mark behind?_

_Schuldig._

_Fiiiiiiiiine._

Brad doesn’t know whose head Schuldig got the map out of, but it’s perfect. It’s not just the street names; it comes with opinions on the probability of traffic problems and places where motorcycles can fit but cars can’t. One of the bikers, maybe. 

He can see police cars in the side mirror behind them, and he turns east, down a one way street, across four lanes of traffic. Constant glances in the mirror show him Charles and Mark catching up and Schuldig perpetually just on his heels. He slows and cuts through Tsentralnyy Park, under a set of white arches, down a long flight of steps, and out the other side onto Sovetskaya, headed east. 

One of the police cars follows them into the park and jams itself under the arches. The others cut away. Charles wobbles dangerously on the steps, but seems to take heart when Schuldig loops back around behind him and charges down again at top speed. 

All four of them make it out the other side. Brad takes to the back streets, and they slow, making a loop back up north and west toward the M53. The map updates as they go, which means Schuldig’s range is…three miles, five miles, ten… They’re well out of the city. The map is still hovering just behind Brad’s eyes. 

Twenty miles north, he pulls over and waits for the others to join him. Mark looks cold and miserable. Charles looks, as usual, blandly amused. Schuldig’s grin is beatific. Brad wonders what to do. Ketterson or his father would’ve hit him for pulling a stunt like this. He wouldn’t have seen that as a deterrent, so it’s likely Schuldig wouldn’t either. 

He looks at Schuldig for a long time. Finally, he says: "Would you have stolen the bike if I’d said I had a vehicle for us?"

"I don’t know. You said you didn’t and they were right there so I took one. It was easy." 

"Ask me first next time. Before you steal anything." 

Schuldig rolls his eyes. "Fine." 

"That’s it?" Mark says. The fresh air seems to have cleared his voice a little, though he once again has tissues up his nose. "I got death threats when I went off mission." 

"You were trying to fuck things up. He was trying to help. Sort of. And he did. We’re in the clear. Results are what matter." 

Mark doesn’t look happy, but he accepts it. They’ve all had that drilled into them for years: in Eszett, the ends always justify the means. 

"Okay, let’s go," Brad says. "We’ve got just enough time to make it to the campsite before dark."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sections of the M53 were unpaved as late as 2008. It's possible it didn't exist at all in 1989. I couldn't find out much of anything about Siberian highways pre-2001, sorry. 
> 
> Also this might be a good time to remind you that the OCs in this story are basically cannon fodder.


	15. leak, tea, shoot

They have sleeping rolls, no tents, no campfire. A small camp stove, meals in packets. They’ll set out again at first light. Brad had hoped to sleep for a few hours and get going again, but the highway degraded quickly from asphalt to gravel to a rutted mud track. It’s not worth the danger of traveling it in the dark just to get there a few hours sooner. 

Besides, what’s the point? Get there sooner, cut off Daisy’s hand sooner, leave her miles from medical attention. It was a stupid plan. He has miscalculated. Overestimated the quality of the roads, underestimated the sheer distance involved, the wilderness, the tight watch kept on people even out here. Suppose she could get to a hospital. How many questions would she have to answer once there? She’s defected and redefected. They’ll already be suspicious. 

It would be kinder to kill her. 

He looks around at his little team and forces down another mouthful of beans. Charles and Mark aren’t eating. Schuldig is agitated, lighting pine needles on fire with the thin flame from the camp stove. It would be kinder to kill all of them. None of them have a life worth going back to. 

Brad blinks and shakes himself. This isn’t him. He recognizes the cloud of despair hovering over and around him from years spent rooming with Mark, fighting through it day after day until it almost ate him alive. 

"Mark," he says sharply. 

Mark looks at him, squinty and miserable, no sign of malice on his face. "What?"

"You’re projecting. Stop it." 

"I’m not," Mark says, sounding more like _I’m dot_. He blows his nose loudly. 

"He’s leaking," Schuldig says. "His shields are all Swiss cheesy." 

Mark goes pale, and the pall of gloom lifts abruptly. He mutters an apology, possibly the first Brad’s ever heard from him. 

Brad frowns at him. He must be in a bad way to slip up like that. Doing it on purpose is one thing, but losing control of your talent is— Only kids do that. It’s like wetting the bed. It occurs to Brad abruptly that Mark can’t be more than two years older than Schuldig. 

Mark is shivering. Brad untangles himself from his own blanket and wraps it around Mark’s shoulders. He lifts a hand to feel for a fever, and Mark flinches from him like he’s expecting a blow. 

"Hold still," Brad tells him. He pressed the inside of his wrist to Mark’s forehead, and Mark looks at him with confusion and suspicion. Brad doesn’t think he feels too warm, but it’s hard to tell in the chill of the night. He shakes out a couple of ibuprofen and puts water on to heat on the camp stove. Charles gets out the tea and passes Mark a paper bag of what turns out to be small, crumbly cookies. 

"You’re just freaking him out," Schuldig says. "Can I shoot stuff now? No one will see out here." 

Brad turns slowly to look at him. He’d thought about trying to acquire guns out here and discounted it. Unnecessary when knives would do, and did he really want Mark to have a gun? No. Schuldig? Definitely not. And yet. 

"Did you steal a gun?" he asks. 

"No, I bought it from Rosenkreuz," Schuldig says, like everyone in the world is slow but him. 

Brad really just wants to put his face in his hands and laugh. All those border crossings, one quick search between them and a one-way trip to Lubyanka. Instead, he takes a slow breath and makes tea. 

"I want to know in the future if you’re carrying any kind of firearm. Any kind of weapon at all. Understood?"

"Yes," Schuldig sighs. "But I have it, so can I shoot it?" 

"No. Someone might hear."

"I have a silencer." He pulls it out to show them. 

"You have a suppressor," Brad corrects. "How much ammo? Did you bring a cleaning kit?" 

"I don’t know. Some. No." 

"Then no. You clean it after you use it. Period. And you always know how much ammo you have on you. Always." 

"Ugh!" Schuldig flops onto his back. "This is so boring! I’m so bored. You the most boring person in the world and I hate you." 

"Is this you acting your age?" 

Schuldig snickers a little, but stays in his prone position. 

"Could we pretend you’re thirty instead?" Brad asks. 

Charles snorts. "Not a bad idea. I think we could do with some adult supervision, honestly." 

"This isn’t a fucking mission," Mark croaks. "It’s a joke." 

He’s leaking again: misery, hatred, distrust. Brad can see Charles physically shrinking away from him. 

“Pull yourself together," Brad says sharply. 

Mark stands up with his tea, turns, and shuffles off into the woods. Brad lets him go. The motorbikes are at the edge of the campsite, within view, and he won’t get far without them. 

Charles rubs a hand over his face and then over the back of his neck. "Anyone else feel like a real shit?" he says. 

"It’ll pass. He’s got his shields up again." 

"No, I mean— Oh, hell." 

"Feeling sorry for him won’t help," Schuldig says, without sitting up. "It’s worse now. He just wants to kill you more. Brad mostly, but you too." 

"Not you?" Charles says. 

"No. Not me.” 

Charles lights another cigarette and hunches around it. He’s quiet for a minute. "Fuck Rosenkreuz," he says. "What if we didn’t go back?" 

"They’d hunt us down and kill us," Brad says. 

"Me, sure," Charles says. He’s looking out into the woods, arms wrapped around his knees. "But you’d see them coming. You and the kid. Why don’t you go?" 

"We wouldn’t make it. We could run for a while, but they’d get us in the end. We have to go back." 

"I hate this," Charles says. 

Brad would like to tell him everything. He’d like to tell him that Eszett is going down. It might take ten years or twenty, but it will happen. He can’t. It would only put Charles in danger, and he’s vulnerable enough already. 

"It’ll be better once you’re out of Rosenkreuz," he says. Charles clearly doesn’t believe him, which is sensible, since it’s not remotely true and they both know it. "You can go if you want. I can tell them you were killed." 

Charles shakes his head. "Mark will tell them. And there’s worse they can do than kill me. They’re still watching my sister back home. She’s at university now. Ketterson showed me a photo just before we left." 

For a moment, Brad’s rage is nearly blinding. He sees the glow of the camp stove and Ketterson’s blood, and nothing else. 

"I’ll kill him if you want," Schuldig says. "When we get back. I almost did before. I can try harder this time." 

Charles smiles, and his posture eases a little. "Thanks for the offer, monster. But I think not. I’ll be all right. Just a little down right now. We’ll all feel better when we’re back in West Berlin." 

"Brad said we could go to McDonald’s." 

"I was thinking more along the lines of getting stinking drunk, but I suppose we could do both. What do you say, Brad?" 

"Let’s get this done first."

"Yes, I thought that was what you’d say. All right. Let’s get some sleep then." 

Charles lies down. Schuldig wraps himself up into a cocoon of blankets. Brad lies down, but he stays awake until Mark returns. Homicidal or not, Mark is his responsibility until the mission is over. 

Brad nods to him, and Mark nods back. It’s the closest they’ve come to civility since the day they met.


	16. shotgun, bodies, salt and burn

Dawn. They pack up and roll the bikes back to the road. The sky to their right grows pinker and warmer as they ride and is eventually suffused by gold and blue. A semi passes them once, going in the opposite direction, lurching over the uneven mud. That’s the only traffic they see all morning. 

Brad has put Charles in front, and he brings up the rear with Mark and Schuldig in between where he can keep an eye on them. Mark is less sniffly and seems to have his gift back under control. Charles gave Schuldig three cups of coffee, because Charles has a terrible sense of humor. As a result, Schuldig would be vibrating even without the occasional washboard sections of road they cross where the mud has dried into hard ridges. 

He talks constantly into Brad’s head, commentary on the landscape, their teammates, television shows he remembers, Lake Baikal, food he wants to eat, on and on. Brad tunes it out. He tries to focus on the mission, on his plan, on any remaining possibility of success as defined by him rather than by Ketterson. 

He needs Daisy’s hand. That can’t be avoided. Even assuming he could get a fake and doctor her prints somehow, Rosenkreuz has clairvoyants who would see through that in an instant. He has a tourniquet. He has a bone saw and morphine. He has—he hopes—the stomach for it. They did it on ships two hundred years ago under far less sanitary conditions than he can produce, and people survived. She must have a car. It is, yes, a hell of a drive, and he won’t be there to help her, but it should be possible. He thinks he could do it himself. It will depend on her health and her will to survive, and those aren’t factors he can accurately predict, no matter how he stretches his gift. 

Images flicker and shift in his mind: Daisy refusing even to try, choosing death. Daisy behind the wheel of her truck, losing consciousness, crashing into a tree, the truck in flames when her lit cigarette finds the gas leak. Daisy in a hospital in Irkutsk. Human will and intention are always the weak points in his predictions. He’ll know with more certainty when he sees her and speaks with her, but, for now, she doesn’t know what’s coming and neither does he. 

Assuming success on that score, he will still have Mark to deal with. He can and will have the rest of his team wait outside—no one will find that odd; it is his final exam. He must be the one to take out the target if at all possible. But if Mark insists on seeing the body, he will have problems. For the moment, though, Mark seems unlikely to insist on anything. He’s bundled up, head ducked down against the headwind, and now has a hacking cough to go with his runny nose. 

They stop for lunch around noon, and Charles sets up the camp stove to make tea for him. Mark hunches around it miserably and eats nothing. Schuldig eats his share. Brad is torn between making him eat and encouraging the tendency to withdraw. Just for a few more hours. 

Back on the road, Brad runs scenarios through his mind over and over until they wear grooves there. Eventually, he makes himself stop and focuses on Schuldig’s mental chatter instead. He’s telling Brad about about the bear he thinks he spotted in the woods off to the right. Brad thinks of their campsite last night. He had never thought to check the future for bear attacks. Note to self. 

The sun moves overhead. The light slants on the other side of Brad’s face. They are approaching their destination. 

Mark turns off onto the appropriate side road. They continue for half a mile and then stop. The cabin should be close. Brad feels twitchy and anxious, which isn’t like him at all. This is not his first mission. It’s not even the first he’s led, just the first without Ketterson’s on-site supervision. He looks at Charles, whose hands are shaking as he lights a cigarette. 

"Mark," he says sharply. 

"I’m not!" Mark says. Cough, cough. "I’ve got it under control." 

"Keep it under control. And wait here. You’re in no shape to do anything but get in the way. Watch for bears." 

Mark gives him a poisonous look, but doesn’t argue. 

They’ve been over the plan, but Brad outlines it again as they walk, because Schuldig has the attention span of a overexcited mayfly. "Schuldig, cover the back door, Charles at the front. I’ll go in alone. Wait for me. Don’t come in unless I give the signal. If the target runs, grab her, but non-lethal force only. The kill is mine." 

The kill. The target. The vocabulary of murder. It’s designed to be dehumanizing, he knows that, but for a moment he wonders who is dehumanized more—the people it applies to or the people applying it. 

The cabin stands at the top of a small hill. Smoke streams from the chimney, and a truck is parked outside, the one Brad has seen with his gift. Wood stacks sit under the eaves, piled up high. Boots thick with mud stand just outside the door. He remembers Daisy telling him about the mud, about the open spaces, about the sky. He had decided not to tell her who he is, but what if she recognizes him? Will that make this better or worse? 

He tries to shake off the clinging threads of Mark’s anger and mistrust. He needs a clear mind. 

He never thinks to wonder about Mark’s range until Daisy comes out the door with a shotgun. 

She fires without warning, and Brad throws himself into the trees at the edge of the road. She’s running for the truck. Schuldig is after her. 

"The tires!" Brad calls to him. He should’ve taken the fucking gun away from him. He could hit the tires from here, but Schuldig— 

Schuldig just waits, ice cold, until the truck is about to run him down and then takes out both front tires when he’s too close to miss. He doesn’t even blink. Daisy loses control of the truck and crashes into a tree. Brad can see blood on the inside of the windshield. He runs. 

"You okay?" he calls to Schuldig. 

"Fine." 

"Find Charles. Stay with him." Brad skids to a stop by the truck. He looks in through the window. Daisy’s neck rests at an unnatural angle. Blood runs from the side of her mouth. He reaches in to search for a pulse. Nothing. All his planning, all Ketterson’s scheming, all of it for nothing. She’s dead, and it was an accident. 

For a long time, all he can do is stand there. He’s seen plenty of dead people before. He’s killed some of them himself. None of them felt like this. He touches her hand, the one he’ll have to cut off. It’s still warm. 

"Brad!" Schuldig calls. "You should come here." 

Brad jogs back toward the cabin. Schuldig is kneeling by the side of the road. Kneeling over Charles. Brad can see red on his shirt. Red on Schuldig’s hands. He stops dead for a second, and then he runs. 

When he drops to his knees next to Charles, he knows it’s too late. A red hole in his chest ejects gouts of blood in time with his pulse. Charles blinks once, but there’s no time for last words, no time for goodbyes. His mouth moves, no air behind it. He stiffens, breathes out, and that’s all. His eyes are still open, but he’s gone. Brad’s seen enough people die to know what it looks like. 

There’s mud soaking the knees of his pants. He’s holding Charles’s hand. He can’t think. 

"He wants you to make sure his sister’s okay," Schuldig says. 

Brad nods slowly. He’ll do that. If he can ever make himself move again. 

Behind them, he hears the pump action of a shotgun. 

"Stand up," Mark says. "Turn around." 

Brad stays where he is. Mark rams the butt of the shotgun into his shoulder. Brad falls across Charles’s body. He’s still warm too. Just like Daisy. How long do bodies take to cool? He’s never stayed with someone he’s killed for long enough to find out. 

"Up!" Mark says. 

Brad twists around to look at him. His nose is red, and his eyes are glassy. Finger trembling against the trigger guard of the shotgun. Brad climbs slowly to his feet. 

"Are you sorry?" Mark demands. He looks at Charles’s body. "Now that you know how it feels, are you sorry for what you did to Dieter?" 

"I was always sorry," Brad said. He looks at Charles, too. "Did you kill him?" 

“No. It was the target. I didn’t have any problem with him. My problem is with you." 

Maybe Mark is projecting again, or maybe the despair Brad feels is all his own. The wound in Charles’s chest is no longer bleeding. His shirt and the grass and mud around him are saturated with blood. 

"So do it," Brad says. 

Mark steps closer. Closer. The barrel of the shotgun presses against Brad’s chest. 

Schuldig, still on his knees next to Charles’s corpse, knocks it aside and fires into Mark’s stomach. Mark falls back with a hoarse scream. Schuldig stands over him and empties the magazine into his face. When the bullets are gone, he dry-fires, thin arm extended and shaking from strain. 

Mark’s head is a pulp of brains, blood, and shards of white bone. Schuldig keeps firing until Brad takes the gun from him. His expression is calm, and there’s no chatter from him inside Brad’s mind. 

Brad is still responsible for him, and that, finally, gets him moving. 

He steers Schuldig inside the cabin, where it’s warm from the wood stove. He sits him at a table with the gun and a cleaning kit. "You clean it after you fire it," he says. "Every time." 

Schuldig is slow to start, but either Mark showed him how or he’s pulling the knowledge from Brad’s mind. He gets to work with the cloth and gun oil. 

Brad steps back outside. No one is likely to come up here, but he can’t leave things to chance. He needs to get the bodies out of sight, get the wrecked truck behind the house if it’s drivable, ditch two of the bikes in the woods, consolidate their supplies. 

It’s a lot to do, and the sun is setting. He’s grateful that he has no time to think. 

*

Charles, Mark, and Daisy lie side by side in the bed of the truck. Brad has moved it out of sight, but he still covers them with a tarp before he goes inside. 

Schuldig is still sitting at the table. The cleaned and reassembled gun sits in front of him. His hands are folded in his lap. 

Brad looks through Daisy’s cupboards. He makes them hot milk with sugar, bread spread with butter, and cuts off a few slices of salami. "Eat," he tells Schuldig, and is relieved when Schuldig looks at him, awareness returning to his eyes. Still more relieved when he takes a drink of milk and makes a face at the taste. He drinks it anyway. 

They eat. Schuldig’s appetite seems fine. Brad has to force down every bite, but he feels better when he’s done. More real. He’s still left with the urge to check on the bodies. To make sure. It happened so fast. 

"I still have to take her hand," he says. 

"I’ll come with." 

Brad thinks about arguing, but honestly he wants the company. They go outside and peel back the tarp. Schuldig holds the flashlight for him. The tourniquet isn’t needed, but he’s glad he brought the bonesaw. It would be much harder with a knife. As it is, he slips and cuts into her slide twice and his own hand once. 

The sound of metal on bone is a low, grating whir as the teeth bite in and grind through. When he’s almost through, the bone snaps. Her hand hangs by a flap of dead flesh until he can cut it away. 

"Put it in the salt," he tells Schuldig, and then goes to vomit into the bushes. He can’t get anything up in the end, though his stomach heaves and he’s sweaty all over despite the cold. He spits excess saliva to the ground.

"Are you done?" Schuldig asks. 

"Think so." 

"What are we going to do with them?" 

Brad looks up at the sky. It’s filled with stars and the faint, cloudy line of the Milky Way. He’s so tired that he wants to lie down on the ground and and never move again. Maybe dig himself a grave first. 

"In the morning," he says. "We’ll decide in the morning." 

They sleep in Daisy’s small bed, Schuldig curled up against his chest, blankets piled on, fire banked for the night. 

"We should burn them," Schuldig says, and somehow that seems right. 

*

In the morning, they pack kerosene, supplies, and two of the bikes into the back of the truck with the bodies. They rumble and bounce up the hill behind Daisy’s house. The crown of it is bare, a wide circle of twenty yards or more. Brad drags the bodies off the truck and lays them out side by side. He dumps on the kerosene and some gas, too. He steps back and tosses a lit match at Charles’s feet. 

The pyre blazes up. Dark gray smoke billows toward the sky. They won’t be able to stay long. Someone will see. 

"Are we supposed to say something?" Schuldig asks. 

"Do you want to?" 

Schuldig’s quiet for a minute. "Charles might’ve been my friend," he says. 

"I’m going to kill Ketterson," Brad says. It’s strange to say it out loud with no risk of being overheard, with ears or minds. "I’m going to destroy Eszett. There won’t be anything left. No one alive to remember it ever existed. I’ll burn Rosenkreuz to the ground and salt the earth." 

Schuldig sticks his hands in his pockets. "Okay," he says. "Cool. I’ll help.”

**Author's Note:**

> that's it, thanks for your patience :)


End file.
